For all the Saints – 09/16/2023 – Juca Kfouri

It was the 1920s, and center forward Feitiço was part of Santos’ hundred-goal attack, alongside Araken, this São Paulo champion, the Praianos’ first title, in 1935.

Spell, six times, three times in a row, he was top scorer in the state championship, a mark only surpassed by Him, the King.

The story jumps to two decades later, when the second cup comes, with Pepe in attack, the second highest scorer in Santos history, behind only Him, the King.

Pepe rightly considers himself to be the club’s top scorer from the “most famous village in the world”, because the King would be from another planet.

From then on, the saga became better known. In 1956, Santos repeated the feat, it was three, with stars like Jair Rosa Pinto, Pagão and Pepe.

From 1957 onwards, the King emerged to establish the greatest hegemony of a Brazilian team of all time, champion of everything, two-time world champion, so remarkable that to this day Santos is the best-known national club worldwide.

From recent times, it is unnecessary to remember Diego and Robinho (this one is better to forget), Brazilian champions of 2002.

Or Ganso and Neymar, three-time continental champions in 2011, not to mention Meninos da Vila —Juary, Pita, João Paulo and Nilton Batata, São Paulo champions in 1978.

Yes, the rare reader knows what comes next.

Lamentations, lamentations and lamentations.

There is and cannot be anyone who worships football transformed into pure art who is not distressed by the possibility, with an air of inevitability, of the first drop to Series B of the Brazilian Championship.

Not that it’s the end of the world, there are so many cases of relegation of greats that have resurfaced — sometimes even precisely because they fell and took a hit.

That doesn’t make it any less sad to look at the collapse in Vila Belmiro.

Do the gods of the stadiums want to play such a trick just because the King hasn’t been to Vila anymore, even though he hovers over all the stadiums in the world?

Or is it a sign of their care, as if they had spared him the pain in recent years, so many times when he fell against the beam?

Blaming the current management will be the easiest, even if it has done very badly in football administration, insecure when changing coaches like changing shirts, although correct from a financial point of view, without which there will never be a self-sustainable solution. More responsible were the irresponsible people who preceded it, authors of the raid that slaughtered Santos.

Think about the trouble that ten (King’s shirt) dear Santos fans are going through: Débora Bloch, Eduardo Suplicy, Emicida, Faustão, with a new heart (hooray!) and already suffering, José Roberto Torero, Mano Brown, Paulo Miklos, Robert Scheidt , Xico Sá and Zeca Baleiro.

Mathematically, the situation is difficult, the kind where you can’t get away with it in one round, but that’s not the problem.

The issue is the weight of the shirt that once haunted Planeta Bola. Those white shirts…

When the team that wears them — in the sense of dressing instead of folding — enters the swamp, the most common thing is to sink.

The worst thing is that you look at the group and see no one with the power to lead the reaction.

It’s difficult to find anyone alive who has seen Spell, in the third decade of the last century, to Swan Song, or Goose, in the second of this.

Anyone who has seen it, from the 1950s to now, must be distressed by the risk that the best DNA of five-time world champion football is taking.

LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access five free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.