יום חמישי, 28 בנובמבר 2013

Nilton Santos, my father and me

I should've written this in Portuguese. But chose English so that my non-Portuguese speaker friends would be able to grasp the feeling of soccer, the passion that moves this whole industry/circus that this sport became. Last night, I got the news that Nilton Santos passed away in Rio de Janeiro, my hometown. From 1948 to 1964, Nilton defended Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas (O Glorioso - The Glorious). He was a defender, a left back, o beque esquerdo. The news of his death reached me in my bedroom in Israel, while I was preparing to move to a new apartment. And there, a little bit squeezed in between boxes and suitcases, I remembered my childhood, the days of supporting Botafogo, the Sunday afternoons of seeing Botafogo led by Tulio and Goncalves playing and making all its way to be Brazilian champion in 1995.

But wait there... Everyone knows that I support Fluminense! Yeah, I do. I PROUDLY support Fluminense Football Club, my passion in three colors. But what few people know is that I only started to be this fanatic supporter I am today in 1998. Before that I "supported" America FC, under the influence of my step-father. And, after that, I was a Botafogo fan for a real short while in an attempt to please my father who's a real Botafogo supported. My mother and her Vasco da Gama were never ever in the picture. Every now and then, I catch myself singing:

Botafogo, Botafogo
Campeão desde 1910
És herói em cada jogo
Botafogo,
Por isso que tu és
E hás de ser
Nosso imenso prazer


These days are long gone and I don't think I still have my Botafogo jersey anymore. Obviously, my Fluminense jersey is right here in my closet and I even arrived to Israel wearing it under the several layers of fabric to protect me from that cold night of Febraury. But even though Botafogo is still important in my life, not only because my father, four sisters and three nephews still support the club (all due to daddy's influence), rather because I love soccer and I acknowledge the importance this club has in the history of Brazilian soccer.

They had Heleno de Freitas, Garrincha, Nilton, Didi, Jairzinho... And how not to mention Jefferson and Loco Abreu? But they had Heleno, the one all the women died for. Had Garrincha, that some say were better than Pele... And also, they had Nilton Santos, the most elegant defender who has ever played. We can argue that'll be better players, but Nilton Santos was from a time when you had respect for other team's players. And it's so rare now. I've seen few examples of honoring the rival recently. I can put on my list the French players Igor Djorkaieff and Marcel Desailly. Unfortunately, I have more examples of very thin professional ethics, just like when, during 2002 World Cup, Mexican players kicked the ball off the field to simply beat up Coby Jones, an American player that as it seems they hated. It'd have never happened in a squad led by Nilton. He'd take the ball from you, never would he leave you lying dead on the field as Martin Taylor did to Eduardo Silva.

By experience I can tell the difference of watching a match full of violence and one in which things get solved nice, professionally inside the four lines. Good soccer is beautiful to watch, it doesn't (ok, there are exceptions) matter who plays. And yesterday watching YouTube videos from past World Cups and Brazilian Championship, I remembered why that's my favorite sport. It brought me back to memory the matches I went to, the Fluminense vs Botafogo match I went with my father, the extreme joy that is seeing your club to win the national championship or any championship, the days I myself was defender (it deserves another post). But above all I thought that I saw players like Junior, Thiago Silva, Cafu, Lothar Matthaus, Thorsten Frings and the first things it comes to my mind when I remember them it's the same thing that comes to my mind when I think about Nilton Santos: your will of winning that match is never greater than the respect owed to the rival player. Nilton Santos: We all learned so much from him....