Athletico 100 years: Edilson Thiele, the doctor

The orthopedist Edilson Thiele He has always been an athlete. He remembers that he always went to games hand in hand with his father, Mr. Erailto, to watch Furacão and eat pine nuts, banana pastries, bread with steak on the grill under the araucaria trees in the back goal of Baixada.

When he graduated in medicine, he was invited to take over the Medical Department by the football manager Geraldo Damasceno and physiologist Odivonsir Frega. Together with his colleague Ricardo Falavinha, he accepted the mission without blinking or worrying about the salary, nor whether he would be paid.

In 1990, the DM was located at the back of the gym, and when the Água Verde river flooded, everything flooded. The professional team trained in Baixada, and the amateurs in PAVOC. In the first year, the red-and-black doctor was champion over his rivals.

In 1993, he had the honor of incorporating little ball to the medical department and a reformulation process began. In 1995, year 1 of the athletic revolution, he managed to implement a Department of Physiology and Nutrition, something unique in clubs outside the national football axis.

But it was in 1998 that things changed at the club after the acquisition of CT do Caju. Athletico became a national reference in physiology, with a team of top professionals, and everything that happened on the field in the years that followed had a causal link with this apparently invisible work.

The history of unorthodox treatment of Gustavo in the very final of 2001 it is just one of hundreds in which the scalpel and Gelol team, led by doctor Thiele, was fundamental to the club’s field results.

In addition to the competence that took him to the Brazilian team, Thiele has the characteristic of an athletic heart so big that it barely fits in his chest.