In the four lines

Heleninho Fom-Fom was what we call, without mincing words, the owner of the team. More or less. Above him was João Vila Nova, the president of Motoclube Futebol Clube of Santa Terezinha, in the Sertão do Pajeú region of Pernambuco, a city neighboring Paraíba.

The Motoclube was a friendly club founded by motorcyclists, namely cowboys from the region who traded their animal stables for steel stables. Despite a certain antipathy from the more traditional members of the community towards this change, they founded a football team to participate in the Santa Teresinha League and later, somewhat more robustly, in the Pajeuense Football League (LPF), thus regaining lost sympathies and, of course, new supporters. In some ways it worked, but perhaps not quite, as we recount some of the exploits of this club.

João Vila Nova was a retired colonel of the Pernambuco Military Police, and therefore known in the city and in the Pajeú region as Colonel Vila, a title he insisted on being known and recognized by. His rank conferred upon him an authority, a supposed austerity, which he always risked emphasizing a little more with the puffing of his medal-laden, authoritarian chest. He wasn't a man of many words, for he said that a military man doesn't deliver messages and waste words, but rather says things how they should be. And in the end, he would conclude with his favorite phrase: "I have spoken!" Always in an imperative voice.

The people, wary of this tough-as-nails Colonel, would say, pro mode, not to bother the old man too much; already somewhat frail from the scars of time and a bronchial constipation that wouldn't heal. However, with his bad temper intact, perhaps even more so because of that, the people would repeat that whatever the Colonel said was law! In other words, a way of saying that what he said was law. Not the law. The Law. If you, readers, understand me.

This observation stemmed from a mixture of voluntary submission and perpetual mockery, for the people of the Sertão do Pajeú, with their poetic vein – it is worth remembering that Santa Terezinha is a neighbor, shortly after those coming from Recife, of São José do Egito, the city known for its decasyllabic and repentista poets, a reputation spread throughout all corners of this Northeast – were, therefore, a people who always infused their words with a touch of humor and jest.

Heleninho Fom-Fom, all-around good-for-nothing, would whine whenever Colonel Vila appeared to have the final say. After all, Heleninho was from the same corps as the Colonel, but of a lower rank: lieutenant. And also in the reserves. However, without the Authority around, oh my God! Heleninho ruled everything. He made and unmade things with the same shrewdness and audacity of someone who thinks he's all that. Above all, he was a complete idiot, not to say a son of a..., and offend the ladies present here. His glory, the medal he wore on his chest, was having unearthed a rare gem for the club, the center forward Jajá.

The center forward Jajá, clumsy as a father, mother, and midwife, kicked the ball like he kicked his shin; in fact, as they say around here, from the neck down, everything was shin, or ball, for Jajá. He'd even kick his dear mother to score a goal and win the game. As you can see, he wasn't exactly a clean player on the field; neither inside nor outside of it, as the gossips say; and no wonder, scouted by Heleninho Fom-Fom and blessed by Colonel Vila, he couldn't possibly be anything good. But Jajá continued his journey towards the goal and the top scorer title, and in that he was a legend, and alongside him was a winger who made history with him (and the reputation of this history matters little here), Braguinha, a kind of leader of the team on the field, who was also the team's coach and, obviously, always picked himself, and certainly gave himself the captain's armband.

Colonel Vila had held the presidency of Motoclube Futebol Clube since its founding, as well as the presidency of the Santa Terezinha League – a strange arrangement, but it explains why the team had won six consecutive city championships organized by the League. Ambitious to the point of neglecting his failing health, he wanted more! He wanted the presidency of the prestigious Pajeuense Football League, which would make him the Lord of Pajeú, and even closer to the Pernambuco Football Federation (FPF) – in other words, to Power. After all, whoever reaches the presidency of the FPF only leaves when they're dead, and believe me: that takes time. Colonel Vila, who already owed a few coins to death, believed, with unwavering conviction, that he would last a little longer as president of the Pajeuense League, and would receive a few extra coins from belonging to the powerful Federation, and would gain voting power. If this isn't an absolute truth, it was at least a belief, and Colonel Vila, ladies and gentlemen readers, should know, was a devout and mystical man.  

Stories circulated freely in the city and even in the far reaches of Pajeú, after all, playing against Motoclube Futebol Clube on their home turf was a... CASE​It was almost a trance. Everything conspired to ensure only one outcome: Moto's victory. And when the team visited their opponents on their home turf, you could be sure there would be great chaos; all orchestrated off the field by Coroné Vila, Heleninho Fom-Fom, and coach Braguinha; on the field, the responsibility for causing trouble fell to center forward Jajá and winger, and coach, Braguinha. It was a sure thing! If you played it wrong, there would be fights, riots that the Moto players, and their crazy motorcycles, would stir up, and the stronger the opponent, the greater the commotion. The team's motto was "Never Lose, Never Retreat!" Whatever the tactic or the intent.

In their own territory, things were surreal. They say that Coronel Vila and Heleninho would redesign everything from the size of the field (width and length) to the shape of the pitch, which, depending on the opponent, could vary from a quadrilateral to a rhombus; from a polygon to a triangle; from a rectangle to a sphere, all to confuse their opponents. You wouldn't believe what these guys were capable of. It was so bizarre and outlandish that, from one half to the next of the ninety minutes, the configuration of the field could be perfectly altered in the most incredible asymmetry, so that wherever Motoclube attacked, the opponent's area would be a hand's breadth from the halfway line. In other words, they hit the center, crossed the halfway line, took another step forward, threw themselves to the ground, and it was a penalty. No mistake!

The number of Motoclube players on the field, ah, you'd need a calculator to check that, because there could have been fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-two have already been counted, since even the substitutes were called up to enter the field during the match at the same time as the eleven starters. Now, if the opponent complained about the oddities, their fate would be an encounter with iron, that is, the barrels of .38 and .45 caliber weapons.

Evidently, as cautious military men, Colonel Vila and Heleninho Fom-Fom, the organizer of the games' logistics, had their shock troops, usually colleagues from the uniform and the retirement department, to protect the aforementioned individuals and their team wherever they went. All upright and Christian people, but not without carrying pistols on their belts, because the faith that moved mountains also kept adversaries away in case of doubt.

On the field, Jajá and Braguinha were tearing their opponents apart. A distant descendant of Italians, a Paulista who had moved to the Sertão for reasons unknown, Jajá was an incorrigible pantomime artist, throwing punches everywhere, including at the Germans' backsides and the ball itself, but who dared call anything? The referees in his games were like TSE (Superior Electoral Court) judges, an abstraction, almost a sphinx. Nobody saw them. They only heard their hissing, in favor of Motoclube, and at the end of the game, when Motoclube scored the winning goal, and it mattered little that a game that started at four in the afternoon ended close to midnight, or depending on the result, at 16:05 pm.

When questioned by reporters and commentators from Difusora and other radio stations in the Pajeú region about these curiosities regarding game time, Colonel Vila philosophized with a paraphrase of Saint Augustine: "There is no time!" Honestly, would anyone dare, in their domain—I mean, the Colonel's—to refute such a creature?

But the most sincere thing about all of this is that for these people there was one thing that would be immutable, I would say sacred, which is: the game is played within the four lines of the field.

It has been said!