The "lone brave" in the stands led the team to win the championship 8 years later

In February 2012, Brazilian giants Gremio beat small side FC Santa Cruz 4-1 at home in the Rio grande del Grande del Grande league. It was supposed to be a niche game that few people paid attention to, but it became popular due to a fan accident. In the empty away stands, only he and half a cup of Coke beside him formed the "Lonely Expeditionary Force".

Eight years later, the story reignited and spread from Brazil to the rest of the world. Because the fan later became the president of Santa Cruz, he survived the bankruptcy crisis of the club and the individual, and led the team to a successful victory in the 2020 Rio Sur Cup, winning the first championship in the team's history in 107 years.

Proudly, he sat in the stands and took another photo according to the actions of that year. This time it was no longer half a Coke, but a championship trophy representing honor.

Today, let's step into the story of Thiago Reich. A story about community football, childhood dreams, persistence and abandonment, and rebirth from despair.

One-man stand

Santa Cruz do Sur is a small city in the middle of Rio grande del Sur, first gathered by German immigrants, with a population of just over 100,000. The only things you can do here are probably one of Brazil's grandest cathedrals and the annual Oktoberfest.

And in the famous football kingdom, the team level here is completely unmatched. Although founded as early as 1913, Santa Cruz has long been a semi-professional team that only competes in continental competitions from January to April each year. As for May to December, the players have their own jobs, those who farm go to farm, and those who drive buses continue to drive buses.

In such an environment, you can imagine which clubs the local children who like football will support. Gremio and Internacional in the state, São Paulo and Santos at home, and Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester United across the ocean.

Thiago Reich is one of the "outliers".

At the age of 12, he was taken by his father to a live game in Santa Cruz and fell in love with football. Unlike the children around him, Reich has always felt that the stars and teams seen on TV are too far away, and it is still the most emotional resonance of his hometown team. As a result, he became a die-hard Santa Cruz fan and wanted to do something for the club.

At first, Reich also dreamed of becoming a star in the youth academy, but soon found that he was not this material. Then I hope to grow up to become a coach, and the real FM leads the team to counterattack, but I feel that the tactics and everything is not good. Finally, at the age of 15, he found a seemingly reasonable way out, telling his father in all seriousness: "I want to be a board member, even the chairman, of Santa Cruz." ”

My father smiled and said to him, "Okay, I'll pay for you then!" ”

Most people don't take the rhetoric of their youth seriously, including the secondary two teenagers themselves. Although Reich goes to Santa Cruz every year, he still studies ordinarily, and then was admitted to college to study journalism.

After graduating, he got a pretty good job in Porto Alegre, the capital of the state, as a journalist in a well-known major newspaper, with a stable income and a bright future.

Then, on the day we talked about at the beginning, the game that pulled the gears of his life.

At that time, Santa Cruz was away to Gremio in the continental league, and no fan wanted to run a 150-kilometer "expedition" for such a small team. However, Gremio is based in Porto Alegre, where Resch works, and the stadium is only a few minutes from the newspaper office.

So, he dug out the Santa Cruz shirt he had been carrying with him from the closet in advance, put it on directly after work, and rushed to the stadium to cheer for his hometown team and his home team.

And when Reich bought a ticket to enter and sat in the away stand, the live broadcast announced: "Today the Gremio Arena has a total of 5,387 spectators. "If you break it down again, it should be 5,386 Gremio fans, plus 1 Santa Cruz fan.

Reich himself was not surprised. Santa Cruz had no fans, and there might have been some of the players' relatives and friends coming, but it was Saturday night, and everyone was either hi at the beach or at the bar. People like him who still run to watch the ball after overtime, think about it and there is no one else.

However, the story began to develop in unexpected places.

In the 17th minute of the game, Santa Cruz actually scored a goal against the powerful Gremio. After filming the players celebrating, the live director turned the camera to the away stand, and unexpectedly found that Reich was alone. He clenched his fists and clapped, not looking too crazy.

However, this image of a lone fan is certainly too suitable for spreading. At halftime, the cameraman ran to ask Reich's name, told the TV audience through the commentator, and quickly became popular on social networks through slices and pictures.

While still on the pitch that day, his phone was already ringing. Dad, mom, friends, colleagues..."We saw you on TV!" ”

The next day, he gave an interview to Brazilian television, made headlines in the Santa Cruz del Sul newspaper, and received media contacts from nine different countries.

On the third day, he found that the video about himself on YouTube had more than 500,000 views.

Over the next six months, Reich became an internet celebrity in his hometown and a symbol of the football spirit of the Brazilian community. He enjoyed his unique identity, and he was even more pleasantly surprised by a call from the Santa Cruz board in 2013.

"Are you interested in being our press officer?"

Reich did not hesitate for a second and said Yes directly.

Life is not inspirational movies

The 26-year-old Reich has a dual identity. In normal times, there is a decent job as a journalist in the state capital. On weekends, he becomes the spokesperson for the home team and attends every game with the team.

It's just that this fulfilling life has gradually become too fulfilling. Reich has been doing more and more chores at the club, and he often gives many operational advice to the management. At a time when the team was sparsely finished and relegated to the second division in the Rio Grande do Sul league, the board had a crazy idea to bring in new blood.

"Hey, Reich, since you are so enthusiastic and love the team so much, come and be the chairman!"

In 2014, Reich reached a crossroads in his life. It was a half-truthed childhood dream, and now it's just around the corner. But accepting it means giving up a stable job and a future. The president of this semi-professional team does not have a dime at all, and to put it bluntly, he is a volunteer.

All the relatives and friends around him expressed their opposition, after all, Reich has no experience in management at all, and is purely a layman in football, and his father's attitude is the strongest: "I see you are simply crazy!" ”

However, after a long conversation, the father remembered the jokes and decided to give his son a chance to take a bold adventure. He helped persuade others, and Reich quit his job as a journalist and moved back to his hometown to become president of Santa Cruz.

When a new official takes office, Reisi's plan is this.

First, Santa Cruz was transformed from a temporary team that played just over three months into a resident team that participated in daily training, various regional competitions and interstate friendly matches throughout the year.

Secondly, find local enterprises and the government to vigorously sponsor and combine various forces to create a new business card of the city, so as to develop and grow for a long time.

Put in inspirational movies, the next is definitely a classic plot that counterattacks all the way. But the ideal is full, the reality is very ... Miserable.

Brazil may lack everything, but the least is the people who play football, and football teams large and small. Santa Cruz didn't have a unique competitive advantage, and before it could negotiate any decent sponsorship, the losses came one game after another.

The three-month continental league has not yet been played, and the club's account has bottomed out.

To keep the team afloat, Reich used his credit card to pay transportation and hotel bills, and then borrowed money from his father to pay the players. By the end of the season, he couldn't find any way to save his finances for more than half a year, and his out-of-pocket debts continued to snowball.

Reisi's family is not poor in Brazil, but it is not very wealthy either. Living in your parents' house like this is definitely not a solution, and it also brings great mental pressure. He began to experience symptoms such as vomiting and fainting, and was diagnosed by the hospital as moderately depressed.

"I fell into extreme negativity because everything didn't go as planned. At the end of the day, I didn't want to be the manager of a football team anymore. I just want to be a fan again, that Thiago in the stands. ”

In 2015, Reich resigned from Santa Cruz, just a short year after he was "elected" president.

There is always a second chance

The next three years are probably the furthest part of Reisi's life since she was a teenager, from Santa Cruz and football.

After nearly a year of recuperation and counseling, he regained his strength and left his parents' home to seek employment in the capital, Porto Alegre. At first, he worked as an editor of the electronic edition of a magazine. A few months later, he moved to an advertising agency as an account manager.

These job opportunities are made in part thanks to his college major, and partly because of the experience he gained during his time as a spokesman and chairman of Santa Cruz, for better or worse. Two years after returning to normal work, he paid off all his debts, although most of them were paid by his father.

However, while Reisi's life is gradually getting on track, his uncontested home team is heading deeper into the quagmire.

Santa Cruz has dropped another level from the Rio Grande do Sul second division and has reached the bottom of the entire state system. In 2018, the team went unbeaten, including every friendly match. There was even a training session against 11 people who were temporarily patched together on the side of the road, and they still lost.

The club's board of directors began to seriously consider whether such a broken team should simply be dissolved in place. And some past fans and friends remembered Reich - "We were all too impulsive at the beginning, now that you are mature and capable, can you save the team?" ”

Receiving such a connection, Reich's heart was very entangled.

This time, he decided to listen patiently to the opinions of those around him. Sitting in his father's car, he carefully proposed the idea of taking over the team again. "I thought my dad would just drive into a tree to get me to give up this bad idea. But what I didn't expect was that he was silent for a long time, telling me that it should be possible this time, and the only premise was not to delay his life again. ”

In May 2018, Reich was re-elected president of FC Santa Cruz Club. If the last time it was called single-mindedness, then this time it is what everyone expects.

And Reisi's management style this time is completely different from three years ago.

First of all, he did not move back to his hometown of Santa Cruz South and took care of the team's big and small affairs. Instead, he stayed in Porto Alegre to continue his normal work, restructured the club remotely, assigned different jobs to different people, and only attended match days and important occasions himself.

Second, he abandoned the idea of making the team bigger and stronger as soon as possible, instead focusing on strengthening ties with the local community. Fans are invited to watch the training session and children are also welcome to join. On match days, there are more linkages with the surrounding small shops and shops, and the victory and defeat can be slowed down, so that the fireworks return to the desolate stadium first.

A year later, despite little improvement, the home crowd grew from less than 200 to more than 1,000. And there are no more debts on the club's books, and survival is no longer a problem.

After another year, the story finally went to a good place.

Reich himself successfully jumped ship again with club management experience, and the new unit was the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul, whose job was the creation and management of social networks, which is a civil servant.

And his team participated in the 2020 Rio Sur Cup, which ended up winning the championship miraculously. The tournament is played by teams from all three levels of the state league, and although giants like Gremio usually only field youth teams, Santa Cruz has fought back in the lowest category, not only for the first time in team history, but also extremely rare in the entire competition.

So, there is the comparison photo at the beginning.

Once the only fan in the stands, he is now the chairman who led the team to victory. From dragging each other down, to achieving each other.

And that's not the end of it.

In 2021, Reich finally returned to his hometown and began to serve as the director of institutional relations at Santa Cruz City Hall in South and, in a way, entered politics.

In the same year, Santa Cruz won the third division of Rio Grande do Sul and returned to the second division.

Of course, Reich's grandstand trophy photos will certainly not be absent.

Still not finished.

In 2023, Santa Cruz won a thrilling 5-4 penalty shootout in the second division championship match, winning the title while returning to the top flight of Rio Grande do Sul after a decade of absence.

Ten years ago, it was because of the team's relegation that Reich had his first chance to become president. Ten years later, the team is finally back where he planned to be, but the chairmanship has been handed over to someone else.

Early last year, Reich announced his resignation to focus on his job at City Hall. But every Santa Cruz fan understands how much credit he has behind these three trophies, and... Reisi, though no longer chairman, is a board member, deputy director of marketing and head of social media for the club.

"I'll be back. Not now, but I'm always grateful for everything in the past. What fan hasn't dreamed of leading the home team forward? So, I will be back. ”

That's Reisi's story.

It is not a cool plot of counterattack, nor is it a desperate struggle of fanatical faith.

This story is only about ordinary local small teams, and an ordinary person who will succeed and fail. Football is not the whole story, and it is not the whole of life. But it's a beacon that will be the light you need at some point.

And whether it is Thiago Reisi, FC Santa Cruz, or every seemingly ordinary ordinary life, there will always be a second and third chance, and unlimited possibilities.