Shakespearean complexity – 03/16/2024 – Tostão

After the São Paulo directors’ cardboard after the match against Palmeiras, the directors apologized and agreed with the sports court that they would not be judged, another cardboard card.

The president of Palmeiras, Leila Ferreira, rightly said that the excuses were convenient to avoid judgment and punishments. On the other hand, the president of Palmeiras should convince coach Abel Ferreira to abandon his tantrums during matches.

During the week, there were great emotions in the Brazilian, South American, European championships and the Champions League, with qualifying games decided in the last minutes or on penalties. Football is theater, a catharsis of human feelings, a mixture of joys, sadness, ecstasy and tragedies.

There are matches of all types. I need to separate emotion from technical and tactical quality. In the electrifying game that qualified Botafogo for the group stage of the Libertadores, even the character of Nelson Rodrigues, the big girl with the nose in the air, who didn’t understand anything about football and who went to all the games at Maracanã, knows that the game between Botafogo and Bragantino it was exciting and very bad, as the Rio team spent the entire game in defense taking shots and Bragantino just crossed balls into the area.

Speaking of Nelson Rodrigues, I dreamed a few days ago that I was interviewing him. He is the greatest theater writer in Brazil and the greatest football columnist, despite not understanding anything about game strategies. When he saw me, he said: “How is Velásquez’s dwarf doing”, as that was what he called me in his chronicles. Nelson Rodrigues was referring to the dwarf who appeared in the corner of one of Velásquez’s most famous paintings, the painting “As Meninas”. I measured 1.71 meters, one to two centimeters less than Pelé, but for Nelson Rodrigues the important thing was exaggeration, hyperbole, delirium, characteristics of the great chronicler.

I asked: when was Fla-Flu born? He replied: “It started forty years before nothing. And then the crowds woke up.” And your passion for Fluminense? “I was already tricolor before myself and even before Christ.” I continued: who will win the 2024 Brasileirão? “Since yesterday, Fluminense. Only a blind person doesn’t see the blatant obvious.”

Who will decide the title? He responds: “Almeida’s supernatural. The idiots of objectivity and the experts don’t go beyond the concrete facts. They don’t realize that the mystery belongs to football. Even the most sordid naked game has a Shakespearean complexity. The soul is everything. The rest is landscape”.

What do you think of analysts in football, politics and other sectors? He responds: “the worst blind people are the biased and the myopic and even worse than the myopic is the one who sees well, but does not understand what he sees. There are people who do not have visual intelligence.

What was Pelé’s greatest virtue? Nelson said: “it was the absolute lack of modesty. He knew he was much better than everyone. He even intimidated the ball, which kissed his feet.”

The other day we continued the interview, as I have to write about the facts. He retorts: “Fuck facts. He writes about passions and mystery. Facts and VAR are stupid.”

Don’t be afraid of ridicule. Only idiots have it. Give a big hug to Juca Kfouri, José Trajano, Fernando Calazans and other columnists.

When I woke up, I was lighter and more excited. Memory is the link between the past and the present, between the body and the soul.

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