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A Faustino Hunch
06 October
Got some good stuff for the book from Cesar, but we spent some time discussing the El Brujito affair. I'm sorry, Dear Reader, but what he told me is strictly off the record. But I will say that I am more and more convinced that this is no run-of-the-mill kidnapping. And I'm absolutely sure that if I were covering this story, I wouldn't be sitting on my butt - or hanging around the Estadio Flora - waiting for the cops or the da Silvas to drop me crumbs of information. Or lies.
So, on the way back from DSJ I decided it was time to have a little chat with Max Salez. I finally got him on his mobile (interrupting his liquid lunch) and we met at his office, downtown. We watched a tape of the DSJ/Atletico game, and I took a good look at El Brujito in the early part of the second half. Something happened to the kid, I'm sure of it. Not a knock or anything like that. Nothing that happened on the pitch. Something that had nothing to do with the game itself. I feel a Faustino Hunch coming on. Watch this space...
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Stadium of Dreams
03 October
At last I get to talk to Cesar Fabian. He's the DSJ physio, and the guy who acted as a sort of foster-father to El Gato when Gato joined the club as a fifteen year-old.
I drove on Suicide Freeway out to the new stadium that Gilberto da Silva (the club's Chairman and owner) has named after his awesome missus. And if I were a more fanciful sort of a fellow, I'd have thought I'd walked into an episode of Star Trek. There's nothing backward-looking about the Estadio Flora; it sits on the industrial wasteland of outer San Juan like an intergalactic mothership. I've watched games there - on TV - but seeing it in the flesh, so to speak, the sheer size of the place blows you away. My God - the money it must have cost! Cesar had told me to check in via a service door way round the back, and as I drove into the car park I realised why. The front of the stadium was under siege: reporters, radio and TV trucks, anxious DSJ fans in El Brujito shirts...
Old San Juan
02 October
I treated - for want of a better word - myself to an 'historical tour' of San Juan. A high - or should that low? - light of the experience was the Old Slave Market at the top of the restored plaza they still call the Pillory. Our (very sophisticated) guide regaled us with an all too vivid account of the punishments and tortures that were dished out there.
To clear my head, I went down to the port area for some sea air, only to have my peace shattered by a tedious display of the so-called martial art called 'paqueira', another hangover from the slavery era. I know it will sound churlish (and politically incorrect), but I can't help finding all this backward-looking 'African' stuff depressing and frustrating. Yes, the history of the slavery era is shocking, brutal, almost unimaginable. Yet, as a wiser man than me once remarked, the past is a nightmare from which we struggle to awake; and the Deep North doesn't seem to want to wake up...
But these are dangerous waters, and I'm a bit out of my depth.
Things took a turn for the better when, on my way back to the hotel, I came across an all-female samba band rehearsing in the street. They were terrific, and I whiled away a happy half-hour...
Favourites
Car: my Jaguar (imported from England at great personal cost)
Footballers: Pele, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona, El Gato, Thierry Henry, Ronaldinho.
Books: Pele - An autobiography by Pele; Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Music: Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Susana Baca, Margaretha Menezes.
Places: Copabacana Beach, Rio; Barcelona, Spain; London, England.
Quotes: "Football isn't a matter of life and death. It's more important than that." Bill Shankly
"The British brought the game here a hundred years ago. But they are an unmusical nation. They taught us the rules of the game, but we could not teach them how to dance. They never learned to do the slow tango in defence, nor how to rumba through the midfield, nor how to samba in the penalty box." Carlos Roberto, in the Introduction to The Dawn of the Beautiful Game by Paul Faustino.
"Most football teams are temperamental. That's 90% temper and 10% mental." Doug Plank
Dislikes
Sushi - raw fish? Strictly for the penguins.
Cricket - a game that lasts three days and ends in a draw? Only the crazy English could invent a thing like that.
Tattoos.
Politicians who pretend to be into football.
Girls with hairy legs - sorry, you girls with hairy legs. I know it's my problem, not yours.