Athletico 100 years: Motorzinho, the mentor of Furacão

There is no reference in sacred or profane books that God intended to give names to things. In almost all cultures, the story told is that, like a good creator, he simply created. He made it day and night. The sky and the seas. He left the task of naming the oxen and the rest of the group to the men and women (whom he also created).

All this to say that it was the work and cunning of one man, the technician Ruy Castro dos Santosthe famous “Little Motor”, which renamed Athletico Paranaense as Furacão. The gaucho from Alegrete, named after a biographer, was a soccer star in the 40s. As soon as he stopped playing, he was brought to CAP at the invitation of João Alfredo Silva, president and father of Jofre.

He was a coach ahead of his time in terms of tactical intelligence and an ingenious builder of rehearsed plays, a great innovation in Paraná football at the time. Above all, he had the best quality of a coach, which is knowing who plays best in which position. It seems simple, but it’s not. Under his command, the red and black team swept their opponents in the 1949 state championship and, due to the devastating effect, the club earned the feared and eternal nickname.

In that event, the team won 11 of 12 games and scored 49 goals. Many of them were scored in plays designed in training by the powerful attacking line: Neno, Viana, Rui, Jackson and Cireno.

Motorzinho loved playing cards and it is said that he ran the game, which was legal at the time, at Athletico’s headquarters on Rua XV de Novembro, from where he gave vouchers from his own pocket to players who were in financial difficulties. Adorable figure at Boca Maldita, he was a red-and-black coach on many other occasions until he passed away in 1980.