Loco Abreu: a heroica autoconstrução de uma idolatria vestida de celeste

Abstract

On November 13, 2015, the fans organized Loucos por Botafogo reinaugurated the "Wall of Idols" Botafogo Futebol e Regatas, panel painted on the wall in front of the club's headquarters on Rúa General Severiano, in the Botafogo neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. In this panel are depicted idols of the club, from Mimi Sodré, from the first decade of the twentieth century, through Didi, Garrincha and Nilton Santos, to the current goalkeeper Jefferson, in all 33 idols are immortalized in this tribute. The guest of honor of this event was Uruguayan player Washington Sebastian Abreu Gallo, better known as Loco Abreu , who defended the colors of the club between January 2010 and March 2012, period of time cut of this work. During his time as a club athlete and at the event, we found countless fans of the club wearing the Celeste Olimpica jersey of the Uruguayan team or wrapped in the Uruguayan flag. The research seeks to understand the motivational factors that led the leaders and fans of a Brazilian football club to idolize, in a singular and improbable way, a professional football player - politically incorrect according to the sports press in Rio - whose nationality (Uruguayan) belongs to the authors of the biggest symbolic and sportive defeat suffered by Brazil. This idolatry reaches unexpected proportions, trampling identities, in the profane mixture of almost sacred icons: they wear the mystical shirt, in which they inserted the shield with the solitary star of the Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas, also wrapped with the maximum symbol of that representation: The Uruguayan Flag. In addition to the theory and narratives of the printed and televised media, empirical knowledge will be of vital support in the composition of this work. For that, I interviewed: Brazilian and foreign journalists, former coaches and teammates, leaders of the different organized fans and Sebastian Abreu himself