Santa Clara-Arouca: Lone Fan’s Support

The guest corner is a blue desert with a yellow oasis: Francisco. It’s the evening of December 21st, Arouca has just drawn 0-0 away against Santa Clara and the team – like all teams – is going under the curve. There is a problem: Santa Clara is a club from Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, nine islands anchored in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 1,400 kilometers from the mainland. Who could ever go on a Sunday evening at the end of December to watch a match between the eleventh and fifteenth of the Portuguese League? Only Francisco Esteves, the biggest fan ever invented. When the team goes under the curve, it finds only one fan: him.

the 43 hour journey

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Francisco is a 24 year old boy. He doesn’t have a license, he doesn’t drive but he goes to see his team every week. For home games, he has to travel an hour from Vila Nova de Gaia, where he lives, to Arouca. When there is an away game, it can go very well or very badly. The most comfortable match is against Porto, because Dragao is behind home for Francisco, but it almost always goes worse. Thirteen months ago, for a Farense-Arouca, he traveled 550 kilometers by bus on the outward journey on his birthday. The team found out about it and gave him a ride back. This year, he went further. He says: “At midnight I took the bus to Lisbon, I arrived at the airport at 4 and at 6 I had the plane for the Azores. Two hours’ flight, more or less. At that point, I saw the city, I found the team hotel to wish the boys good luck and at 7.30 the match started. On the way back, I arrived at the airport at 7.30 and at home at 7.” They travel 3,400 kilometers (300 by bus and 1,400 by plane on the outward journey, the same on the return) and 43 hours of travel to see the boys away.

francisco and l’arouca

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Francisco has a rule: “I don’t want to say how much I spend”. Nothing to say. He certainly tries to avoid hotels even though he studies Hotel Management in life. “I don’t have a girlfriend and I don’t play football,” he says. It honestly seems like too much but, at least for now, that’s how it goes. The story, which is already not normal, becomes stranger if you consider that Francisco, until 12 years ago, wasn’t even a fan. Then he started going to the stadium, which was near a grandmother’s house, and he got hooked.

a love story

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That time in Faro, when the team gave him a lift, Francisco started to believe that it wasn’t a dream – in his words – at the height of Lisbon… and from Faro to Lisbon it’s 2 hours and 45 minutes. On Sunday, in the Azores, he simply came close to tears: “I was almost crying.” They know him by now. Yesterday the club published a video in which Tiago Esgaio, the starting right back, takes the car and drives an hour to Francisco’s house to give him the team’s Christmas sweater. The initiative is banally commercial but pay attention: in Francisco’s stories, in the photos in Ponta Delgada, in the club video there are never travel companions, ultras groups, girlfriends, friends, intruders. Just a man with a beard and his Arouca. This Christmas story is actually a great love story.