This article aims to discuss the outstanding contribution given by Nelson Rodrigues, usually known as theater writer, to understanding the Brazilian football and the role it plays in Brazilian society. His football chronicles turned into a particular way of seeing the Brazilian football player and, as consequence, the Brazilian man and the Nation itself. Rodrigues has been seen as belonging to the Romantic theoretical field which lead us to analyzing the main aspects of this current as well as the form it assumed in Brazil. Before starting using Rodrigues chronicles, this article shows the importance of football in the Brazilian context, since the beginning of the 20th century. The key Rodrigues contribution has been the so-called Vira-Latas Complex, a complex of inferiority felt by Brazilians, in the football scene as well as in the national life as a whole. Along the text a link between the author and Romantism was developed, including, as well, hobbesian elements which belong to Rodrigues' hard thought. In the end, the article introduces, although in a short way, some ideas of Roberto DaMatta, a contemporary author also focusing in football, who shares some Rodrigues' ideas, but provokes a rupture with Romantism, searching for a more structural approach to understand football and Brazilian society and nation.
Romantic; Literature; Football; Brazilian Society