Futebol

by Alex Bellos

  Father Santana lives in a small mews house in a lower-middle-class area between São Januário and the Maracanã. When I meet him he is wearing a white monogrammed polo top and is sunk deep into a comfy chair. There is nothing in the room that suggests I have entered the temple of a holy man. For a start, he looks as hard as nails. He was a teenage boxer and despite his age – he is sixty-seven – has kept a pugilist's beefy sense of presence. His skin colour is at the blackest end of Brazil's rainbow shades.

  His name is Eduardo Santana and he is not a priest, although he earned the nickname because he was always organising rituals and he had a spiritual demeanour. During our conversation he comes across as a quiet and gentle man – very different from his effervescent appearances on the touchline. He is easygoing and accommodating. He is also very funny, sticking his tiny tongue out when he smiles. He likes being called Father: 'With a title you get treated with more respect.'

  Father Santana plays up to his role as Vasco's black guru. Encouraged by the radio commentator Washington Rodrigues, he once ran on to the pitch after Vasco won a championship and lit twenty-four candles on the centre circle. He told journalists he was thanking the gods. Yet behind the stunts there is a serious belief. He goes to the Catumbi cemetery with his wife, Carmen, on the eve of important games. 'Just us and the spirits,' he says. They light a few candles, leave a few offerings. As he gets older and his physical condition declines, he has slowed down on the rites. Spiritual work, he says, should only be done when the body is healthy.

  The mystique around Father Santana transcends football. He is the best-known Afro-Brazilian spiritual figure in Rio. His exuberant antics express a joy of life that reflects positively on the city's African heritage. Rio paid tribute. In 1991 he was declared the Black King of carnival, a sovereign title created for him and enshrined in law. His duties include watching the processions from the royal box. The Black King is, clarifies the historian Hiram Araiijo, 'an intermediary between man and the orixas' – able to invoke 'the magic entity whose powers permit the carnival to proceed in peace and happiness'. This is a man you want on your team.

  Father Santana describes himself as a spiritualist – which is a concise way of being vague. Spiritualism was introduced to Brazil in the nineteenth century by Allan Kardec, a Frenchman who thought that enlightenment could be achieved by communicating with souls of the dead. Kardec's ideas did not excite the French. In Brazil, however, they took off among the middle classes as a respectable type of Christianity and also mixed with Candomble to form a new religion, Umbanda. Father Santana is elastic about which doctrine he follows. He likes Christian Kardecism, Umbanda and Catholicism too. No problem. A characteristic of syncretic Brazilian forms of worship is to experiment with many beliefs and take what you like best.

  Many Brazilians dismiss macumba-the generic term for Umbanda and Candomble-type rituals – as witchcraft. A Vasco coach once said that, whereas he was speaking to God, Father Santana was conversing with the Devil. Father Santana quite liked the comparison. 'You can't both pray for the same thing. You pray to different sides and you both meet at the end of the road.'

  We look through a box of old newspaper clippings. A photo falls out that looks like a group of sheikhs at a business convention. The crowd of people are in white Arab robes and keffiyehs. All the men have moustaches and Arab skin except one, who is black and sitting in the front row. A blue pen has marked the odd-man-out, just in case you are particularly short-sighted.

  The snap is from Father Santana's years as masseur to the Kuwaiti national side. The back row, he points out, are the ministers of the Kuwaiti government, the men sitting down are the players and, there in the front, you-know-who. Father Santana accommodated the cultural differences of living in the Gulf spectacularly. When the Emir told him that he wanted a massage too, but that non-Muslims were forbidden from touching the royal legs, Father Santana converted and changed his name to Ahmed.

  I see the official certificate, in English: 'Mr Eduard [sic] Santana, holder of a Brazilian passport, appeared before the court of first instance, legal authentication department . . . declared that he is Christian Catholic and was inspired by Islam and pronounced in front of us the confessions of Faith by saying "I bear witness by saying that there is but one God Allah and Jesus Christ Son of Mary is the servant and apostle of Allah . . . I am totally absolved from all religions different from the religion of Islam."'

  It reads like a bigamist declaring a vow of fidelity. Father Santana is a Latin lover of spiritual promiscuity. For him to rigidly swear himself to a new faith is both entirely natural – one more system to experiment – and self-contradictory. It is a comic misalignment of two opposite approaches. Religion in Brazil is a pick-n-mix of whatever takes your fancy, not a way to define yourself against other beliefs.

  Ahmed Santana enjoyed life as a Muslim. He learnt a lot. He made a pilgrimage to 'that big stone'. He added to his repertoire of sacrifices the skills required to kill a camel.

  Sport has been linked with worship at least since the Olympic Games of ancient Greece and, in the Americas, the ball games of the Aztec and Maya civilisations. Football in Brazil gained a mystical side early on in its development. Father Santana is merely a recent illustration of a colourful tradition that goes back at least to 1932. Mário Filho writes of a macumba ritual in his book of that year's Copa Rio Branco, in which Brazil unexpectedly beat the World Cup holders Uruguay in Montevideo. Oscarinho, a player and active medium, 'unburdened' Leônidas's legs on the eve of the game. Leônidas notched both goals in the victory. Oscarinho did the same ceremony four days later on Jarbas, before a game against club side Peñarol. Brazil won 1-0. Guess who scored?

  Brazilian footballers have got up to all sorts of macumba to win games. Bathing boots in water – to quench the thirst of their saint – is distinctly ordinary. As is washing feet and pouring the dirty water on opponents' pitches. The most colourful accounts come from Bahia, the spiritual home of black Brazil, a state where Candomble temples outnumber churches. Paulo Amaral, Brazil's physio in the 1958 and 1962 World Cups remembers a final of the Bahian state championship in which the players before the match placed themselves round the four edges of the pitch. They all had water in their mouths and were each holding an acaraje bean fritter. They spat out the water and threw the food on the ground.

  One of the best known dictums in Brazilian football states: 'If macumba works, then the Bahian championship would end in a draw.'

  Nothing riles Father NiTson, Corinthians' former Candomble priest, more than hearing those words. 'It is said that macumba doesn't win games,' he declares. 'We have proved this wrong.'

  He explains.

  In January 2000 Vasco played Corinthians in the final of the first World Club Championship. The match was a duel between two of the largest clubs in Brazil. It was a symbolic contest between Rio and São Paulo, the two metropolises whose rivalry shaped the country. Beyond the terrestrial plane another battle was fought. The clubs were competing for the favours of the orixas.

  The final ended in a 0-0 deadlock. Penalties were to decide the title. Corinthians converted four out of five. With Vasco on three out of four, Edmundo, one of Vasco's star players, stepped up to pull scores level. He shot wide.

  'Exu was paid for stopping Edmundo's goal,' says Father Ni'lson. He makes it sound so obvious. 'You pay Exu to be your slave. We paid him with a lot of farofa manioc powder and juicy steak cooked with onions – he likes to eat well-cigars and cachaça. This was put by the train line just as you enter Lencois. Thanks to him we won the title.'

  Lencois is not in São Paulo, which is where you might expect it to be considering its importance to Corinthians. Lengois is Father Nilson's home town, set among a paradisiacal stretch of waterfalls and green mountainous ridges, eight hundred miles north in central Bahia. Father Nilson uses Lengois as a retreat to soak up its mystical forces.

  But if you think that flying to Bahia and preparing a sumptuous banquet is enough to win the World Club
Championship, you are very much mistaken. As well as returning to Lencois, Father Nilson also drove from his home in São Paulo to Praia Grande, a beach on the coast near Santos. 'The sea has infinite strength,' he says. Each of the five ceremonies at Praia Grande involved pushing a wooden boat out to sea laden with food, candles, champagne and whisky. Sometimes the cargo would include items purloined from the Corinthians players' kit bags. The sessions each took three days and three nights. Most of Father Nilson's time was spent fishing, playing cards and swimming in the water. The hardest part was abstaining from meat, a necessary part of the ritual. 'This is very difficult for me because I love meat. But for Corinthians – I'll do anything.'

  Meeting Father Nilson is a disorienting experience. When I arrive at his mother's house in São Paulo he sits me down at the kitchen table. He is wearing a black T-shirt with a white collar, Corinthians colours, and his face looks tired and unshaven. His dark eyes make constant contact. He takes out his own tape-recorder, switches it on and, sounding like a chat-show host, begins: 'It is a pleasure to have you here and I wish you success . . .' I double-take. Who is doing the interview here?

  'Macumba does win games – or if it doesn't win them it helps,' he reasons. 'If you are spiritually well you will do well.' The argument in its soberest form is hardly voodoo: macumba may not work if you do not believe in it, but if you do believe in it – and many do – it will at least give you the confidence to play better. For Father Nilson there is an added sense that human beings are manipulated by divine forces which need to be assuaged. Our conversation feels like a New Age therapy session. His world is full of African gods, Catholic saints, interconnected forces, spirits and vibrations.

  Father Nilson reminds me of Father Edu. He has a similarly pungent aroma and although he does not reach Edu's level of camp he is warmly intense. Like Edu, he is a proper priest who entered the football milieu circumstantially. 'Before it happened I never thought I would work for a football club. It never came into my head. I think it was decided by God. Now I live for football.'

  Or did. In 2000 Father Nilson was sacked from Corinthians after eighteen years' service. He has interpreted his dismissal as a decision of the gods, so he can eventually make a glorious return. His departure marked the start of the worst run in Corinthians' history. The World Club Champions lost nine games in succession. Then, he says, he heard a message on his answer machine asking him to restart his rituals. He did three. Corinthians won six times in a row. 'Coincidence?' he exclaims.

  Father Nilson was invited to work for Corinthians in 1982 by Vicente Matheus, the club's then president. Actually, by his wife. Marlene Matheus had been to Father Nilson's temple in the outskirts of São Paulo for some spiritual guidance. He then worked at Corinthians' Parque São Jorge stadium, earning £200 a month, a moderate sum, about four times the minimum wage. For a while he even had his own office. He was an administrative functionary, although the club now denies he was ever an employee. 'All this stuff is very undercover,' says José Eduardo Savoia, a journalist who covers Corinthians. 'No one at the club would ever admit to having a macumba priest because it would be devaluing the work of the coach and the players.'

  The Matheuses were larger-than-life characters who had already dabbled in the supernatural. In 1976, after twenty-two years of having never won the São Paulo state championship, Vicente granted a request for a macumba ceremony at Parque São Jorge. What harm would it do? Things couldn't get any worse. The spiritual emergency team was an all-star affair, including Olinda's Father Edu and an anonymous young padre, Miranilson Carvalho Santos, a.k.a. Father Nilson. The holy men took spades and picks to dig up the turf – and discovered human teeth, a femur and a frog. A frog! The following year Corinthians were champions.

  'Coincidence?'

  During his time at Corinthians Father Nilson describes himself as having been the club's 'spiritual caretaker'. He says: 'I learnt a lot from them and they learnt a lot from me. It was a good marriage. We learnt that Corinthians was a mystical team and that Father Nilson was part of that mysticism.' His real purpose was, he says, to promote black Brazilian culture. He held daily group sessions and counselled players individually. In defeat he told stories of black slaves. 'We would show that the orixas were "chained" too – but they didn't have to be beaten. It was a type of positive brain-washing.'

  After we have chatted for an hour Father Nilson is a lot more relaxed than he was when he started. He seems flattered when I ask him what perfume he is wearing. 'Avon's Touch of Love,' he gushes. 'I use it every day. It brings out a positive radiation.'

  By now he is almost flirtatiously open with his thoughts. He tells me that when I walked in he knew the interview would be good. I was not wearing any lilac. He haaates lilac. The colour terrifies him. His voice drops: 'If you had turned up in lilac I would have taken a clove of garlic and grasped it under the table.'

  Fear of lilac, he tells me, is not a religious conviction. It is one of his superstitions. He has so many that I wonder how he leads a normal life. Some are not uncommon in Brazil. He puts his right foot on the floor first when he gets out of bed and he always enters and exits a building from the same door. But others are almost deliberately perverse. He always sits to the left of whoever he is with. If he sees an ambulance when driving he parks his car for fifteen minutes, because ambulances are loaded with suffering. If he sees a funeral cortege he immediately turns off down a side street. 'I'm genuinely pissed off with missing the start of games because of this sort of thing,' he moans.

  Football is a fertile ground for superstitions because of its ritualised nature and because of the mellifluous influence of Lady Luck. Brazilians, already predisposed to irrational beliefs, have turned football superstitions into a badge of their fanaticism. During the World Cup in 1998, shortly after I moved to Rio, I was surprised to find few people in bars cheering on the national side. Most were at home watching with their families. When I asked one of my few acquaintances whether I could watch at her house I was told that, unfortunately, since I had missed the first match it would be impossible. Superstition dictated that at every match the exact same people must be present. Outsiders were not welcome. Or maybe it was the kindest way to brush me off.

  I have since learnt that the only time it is socially acceptable not to wash an item of clothing – Brazilians are obsessively hygienic, shower several times a day and take their toothbrushes to work – is when it is your lucky shirt or piece of underwear. These garments must be worn during every match throughout a competition. While a football supporter may mock himself for always driving to the stadium in the same car, with the same friends, buying the same beer, sitting in the same place and wearing the same shirt, he does so because it makes him an authentic fan, not an eccentric one.

  Footballers all over the world have their own superstitions although few are as self-defeating as the Brazilian who refused to enter the centre circle. He told his coach: 'If I go in there, I'll break my leg.'

  The most superstitious man in Brazilian football was Carlito Rocha. Like fans that insist on keeping the same routines, Carlito's basic rule was that everything that happened on a day in which Botafogo won should not be changed. This was particularly relevant to the team because Carlito, during the 1940s and 1950s, was Botafogo's president. Match days became ever more complicated procedures. Once when the team bus was stopped going the wrong way up a one-way street, Carlito refused to let the driver go into reverse and ordered the players to walk to the Maracanã on foot. 'Our team does not go backwards,' he said.

  On arriving at an away ground he used to spread a kilo of sugar on the walls. He would prepare the team food personally and clean his hands in the hair of the nearest player. Each defender had a little piece of paper put in his boots with the name of the man he had to mark – so they would be on top of them before the game started. The fancy embroidered curtains at Botafogo's club house were tied up in knots for all games, symbolising tying up the opposition. Carlito had so many lucky charms that h
e ordered a giant gold safety pin to be made to hang them all from.

  Yet the greatest of Carlito's talismans would woof very loudly if you approached it with a sharp needle. Biriba, a black-and-white crossbreed, was effectively the team's twelfth man. He made his debut by accident in 1948 at a match of Botafogo's reserves against Bonsucesso. During one of Botafogo's attacks, the ball came flying to Bonsucesso's goalkeeper. So did the scruffy mutt. In the confusion the keeper messed up and the ball went in. The referee said the goal stood.

  Carlito Rocha and Biriba

  Biriba was a stray taken in that day by Macae, a reserve. From then on Macae was ordered to bring his companion to every match. Carlito used the lucky dog for more than superstitious purposes. He would let it loose on the pitch when Botafogo needed to cool the game down, in order to break the rhythm of the opposition. Botafogo's players never lent a hand in chasing the dog off, leaving it to the other team and the referee. By the time the game restarted, Botafogo had regained the psychological advantage.

  Biriba was more than a mascot. He was paid the same bonuses as the first-team players and Macae became a kept man. The club chef cooked the dog the best cuts of meat. It is said that the Botafogo doorman even had to taste Biriba's food first since it could have been poisoned. Botafogo's rivals had good reason to do so. The team was improving with the hound on its side. One club threatened to kidnap him. Carlito ordered Biriba and Macae to sleep together in the club building.

  Before one important game Biriba peed on a player's leg. Since Botafogo won the match, Carlito's predictable logic demanded that before each match Biriba should pee on the same leg. It cannot be conclusively proved that the ritual urination had no effect. Botafogo won the state championship in 1948.