Dand from 1963 to 1970, I worked as a doctor at the small hospital in Três Passos (RS), where more than 70% of the population was of German origin. Many of these people did not speak Portuguese, especially women over 40 and children under 7 years old. As I didn't speak German, I needed the help of a translator for many years who helped me take the history and in other stages of the care.

I didn't learn German at that time, but I decided that one day I would. I started studying Goethe's language in January 1996 and immediately realized the great difficulty in learning a language like that when I was old. I took several intensive courses and started using private teachers. As if that wasn't enough, in May 1998 I signed up for a super intensive course at the Goethe Institut in Munich, which was not a good decision, as it is impossible to assimilate such a complex language with any benefit in eight daily classes for two weeks.

My class had as students a Finnish journalist, a Dutch lawyer, an Italian engineer, a French university student, an Argentine musician and I, a Brazilian doctor, the oldest in the class. Right at the end of the first day of class, each of us was asked to choose a topic, which related to our country, for a presentation on the last day that would serve to assess achievement.

The title of my presentation, “Tityus serrulatus and the tetracampeonato”, aroused great curiosity. Firstly, what is Tityus serrulatus? I replied that it is a Brazilian killer scorpion. Next: what four-time championship? I replied that it was the fourth football championship that Brazil won in 1994. And what does this killer scorpion have to do with Brazil's fourth title? I replied that they would then wait for my presentation.

The 1st championship
Brazil won the first World Cup in 1958, with a group of young players, some of them, like Pelé, exceptional. During the preparation phases, our team was violently criticized by the press, who blamed the top hats for having called up inexperienced players, an unimpressive team to represent the country in a competition of fundamental importance for Brazilians. I remember passing through the mining town of Poços de Caldas when our team was concentrated there. The unanimity of the reviews was impressive. However, as everyone knows, Brazil won the title in Sweden for the first time.

I, who don't like football, but who am Brazilian and cannot be completely oblivious to what is happening around me, have my interpretation of why Brazil won its first championship, despite all the criticism. Brazil won in Sweden because it had several extraordinary players – not just Pelé – who decided plays through individual moves that are still remembered today in the history of football.

The two-time championship
The second championship in Chile was won, in my opinion, once again by the performance of these exceptional players. Anyone interested in football knows that Pelé, considered the soul of the team, was injured in the first game. Immediately, Garrincha took Pelé's position with ease. It is possible to perceive in the moves played by Garrincha a deep intimacy with the ball. For us doctors, it appears that the player's neural extensions surpassed the physical limits of his body and installed themselves in the ball itself, allowing him to feel the ball as part of his body.

The third championship
For an amateur observer like me, it was no longer possible to identify young players with skills as remarkable as those of 1958 and 1962. João Saldanha, an intelligent and aggressive commentator, who was making his debut as a coach, passed on his personal aggressiveness to the team he called up. In a training game with Argentina, a Buenos Aires player's leg was broken. Imagine the Argentines' reaction. Our national team’s players came to be called “Saldanha beasts”. Phrases attributed to the coach were circulating: “football is a man's game”, “if the ball passes, the guy won't pass”. A danger! A disaster! And look, the Bush doctrine didn't exist yet.

After so many mistakes, Zagalo took over as the new coach and called on Claudio Coutinho as physical trainer and Parreira as assistant. The 1970 team had Pelé as a remnant of 1958 and a majority of young people, all undergoing competent physical training, using the Cooper method – which then excited Coutinho. The result of this physical preparation made Brazil the most combative and competitive team during the second half of the games in Mexico. Anyone who watches the recordings can clearly see that Brazil was the team in the second half (the first half was difficult for the Brazilian fans).

But the crop of extraordinary players, young or old, disappeared and Brazil lost successive championships. It took 24 years for us to lift the cup again.

The fourth championship
In 1994, with the Parreira-Zagalo double remaining from 1970, once again our team did not have extraordinary players and was discredited and opposed by the press and the majority of the population. By instinct, by luck or even by rational analysis, the Parreira-Zagalo duo, in my perception, asked themselves: how can we win the four with this group of stilts?

I venture to give the answer. To win with stilts it is necessary to give the players physical training superior to that of all other teams, so that Brazil would be, as in 1970, the team of the second half. It was also necessary not to change the players – even if there were better ones in the country –, to give them security and to do something so that they could form an excellent team, in the style of the best European football. It appears this was done and faith worked.
I remember that when I, in the Emergency Room at Unicamp, told the professors, resident doctors and interns that Parreira and Zagalo were doing the right thing, I almost got beaten up. They told me: “you don't understand football”, which was true. They pointed out those two very good ones in Rio Grande do Sul, another excellent one in Minas, one more in São Paulo and another in Rio that “those hardheads Zagalo and Parreira don’t call up”. They must be right, there must be better ones, but not enough to win games alone. The paradigm adopted, by instinct, was that of the team, that of European football, and for that it was necessary to maintain the same group.

As you know, in 1994 our team won the quadruple and the press, which was discrediting the coaches, didn't really understand how the team managed to win. Brazil celebrated the title, but the coaches were not given due value, as Brazilians like artistic football, happy football, smart, almost naughty football, the football of Pelé in 1958 and Garrincha in 1962.

Tityus serrulatus, the killer scorpion
Found in fossils from the Silurian period (425-450 million years ago), the scorpion, as a mystical figure, populates everything from religious and war murals to household utensils. Not only as an agent of evil (of death), which is the most frequent, but also placed among the gods, in the Zodiac, associated with good. According to Mello Leitão, Orion (son of Zeus) was killed by the sting of a scorpion, because he was a hunter who boasted that he would kill all the animals on Earth.

The largest current scorpion is Hadogenes troglodytes, which reaches 21 cm, but some specimens from the Silurian-Devonian period, such as Brontoscorpio anglicans, reached more than 80 cm. In Brazil we find Tityus serrulatus (photo on this page) mainly in Bahia, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, Goiás, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná. Due to the great expansion of distribution in the last 25 years, it has been occurring a lot in areas of Campinas, São José dos Campos and Brasília.

From 1971 to 1980, in the HC Emergency Ward, we did not receive any specimens of Tityus serrulatus from Campinas, where almost all accidents were caused by Tityus bahiensis. Today, at the Poison Control Center, approximately half of the scorpions we receive from Campinas are serrulatus, much more dangerous than bahiensis.

The expansion of Tityus serrulatus was studied by Wilson R. Lourenço, the son of French parents born in Rio Claro, who works at the French National Museum of Natural History. According to him, one cause is a rare characteristic among scorpions, which is parthenogenesis. The ability to reproduce through parthenogenesis – the egg develops without being fertilized, with no need for a pair – allows a single specimen, transported in a suitcase, furniture or other vehicle, to reproduce and develop in other regions.

Among the natural predators of scorpions are some spiders, the praying mantis, some coleoptera, toads and toads, lizards, some mammals such as rats, hedgehogs and coatis, and numerous birds such as chicken, duck, turkey, goose, guinea fowl , owl. Owls, due to their nocturnal habits like scorpions, can play a relevant role in controlling this population. Chickens, even with daytime habits, can find scorpions because they scratch.

The venom of Tityus serrulatus acts on the sodium channels of cell membranes, inducing depolarization, acting on the autonomic nervous system, sensory, motor and muscular nerve fiber endings.

The most frequent manifestation of scorpion accidents is pain, usually intense, that appears immediately at the site of the sting, radiating to the root of the affected limb. General manifestations of tachycardia, bradycardia, arterial hypertension, arterial hypotension, nausea, vomiting, sweating, pallor, electrocardiographic and echocardiographic changes, anxiety, agitation, heart failure, acute pulmonary edema, shock and death may appear.

Vomiting is a valuable indicator of severity, as long as it was not caused by pain. When evaluating a patient, local anesthetic infiltration is advisable so that vomiting can be assessed as a safe indicator of severity. Death from serrulatus scorpions can occur mainly in children, but is rare. At Unicamp's HC, from 1971 until today, two children died after being injured by a scorpion, the last of them on the morning of March 6, 2005.

Urbanization and migration
IBGE data on population migration from rural to urban areas over the last 40 years is impressive. The emergence of the BNH (National Housing Bank), in the 60s, was intended to meet the colossal demand for housing in urban areas. I remember a report from 1966-68, with a 75-year-old woman from the rural area of ​​northern Minas Gerais, who, when asked what she thought of the popular houses being built by the BNH, replied: “It won't work, because the houses They are very close and the chickens all mix together.” For her, there could not be a home without enough space for her animals.

At this point the reader may be wondering what the chickens do here.

The relationship between serrulatus and tetra
In my interpretation, migration, disorganized and accentuated urbanization, as well as the presence of the automobile contributed to removing the dirt streets that served as football fields from the outskirts of cities. This prevented boys aged 1 to 6 from training with the ball for long hours of the day, to the point of stimulating the growth of their axons (neuronal extensions, nerves), beyond the physical limits of their body, reaching the ball and making it possible the perception of it as part of your body. The figure of the boy on this page represents what in 1998, in Munich, I called LangaxonfuBballspieler (football player with long axons) – it is a representation made at my request by Jorge Luis Vitale Perdomo, former FCM student at Unicamp, now a plastic surgeon in Campinas.

In my hypothesis, a football player has a much greater chance of becoming extraordinary, with special skills, when he feels the ball as part of his body. He must be a LangaxonfuBballspieler.

In this line of ideas, we should no longer expect to win World Cups from a few extraordinary players, capable of deciding matches with brilliant individual performances, but rather adopt the paradigm of the best European football, that is, a well-prepared team physically, playing together, through rehearsed plays. It's not the football that Brazilians like to watch.

As for the expansion of serrulatus, the causes are certainly parthenogenesis, migrations and disorganized urbanization. The presence of the car and the absence of backyards, vegetable gardens, hedges – a biologically healthy environment – ​​did not allow the development of the scorpion's natural enemies. There was no space for the chicken. The chicken of the elderly lady from Minas is not part of our urbanization.

Luckily, Brazil won the fifth championship playing against teams that were not very well prepared. Our selection gelled and ended up transforming, throughout the tournament, into a true team. If we had initially played with the teams that we beat in the end, we would have been defeated.

Now with the failure in Germany, in 2006, without adequate physical preparation and rapport, the only thing left to do is look for the culprits or create environments that allow the emergence of new LangaxonfuBballspieler. Or else definitively adopt the European football paradigm. Or, what would be better, embrace the last two alternatives.