He has outlasted Danny White and Buddy Bell and Mark Aguirre. He goes back so far with Dallas he probably could remember when the Cotton Bowl wasn’t embarrassed to invite a Southwest Conference team to its New Year’s bash. Nolan Ryan was one of his contemporaries. So was Tony Dorsett and Rolando Blackman and Larry Parrish, all of them stars in their fields, all gone.
Yet Antonio Carlos Pecorari, in his sport, remains bigger than any of them.
The question is: Would you recognize that name on his American Express card?
Probably not. But anyone with even a nominal interest in his sport knows of Tatu, the most famous Sidekick since Tonto. A four-time Most Valuable Player in indoor soccer, he is one of only two players to score more than 1,000 career points. He hurtled that milestone this season, bad back and all. Sometime early next season, when he’ll be 34 and his body will be barking at him again, he’ll pass Steve Zungul to become the game’s all-time leading scorer.
Tatu has been unmistakable in his 11 years at Reunion Arena. He could not be better-suited for his sport, said his longtime coach, Gordon Jago. Tatu is a pinball with a flop of brown hair, that little bolt of excitement who’d give you the shirt off his back, as nearly 700 people will testify.
But, after all this time, is that all we have seen, a topless guy with a funny nickname?
“What you see on the field,” he said of his alter ego, “is a completely different person. He’s explosive, he’s a fighter, he’s sometimes a difficult teammate to be with. He demands the highest standards for himself and his teammates and the referees, and if they don’t come up to it, he explodes.”
His teammates expect it. That’s Tatu, they say. They don’t offer much more of a teammate that Jago once labeled “a loner.”
“We only cross paths on the field, really,” said David Doyle.
Asked his favorite Tatu story, Doyle didn’t have one. Neither did Mike Powers, and he has been Tatu’s roommate on the road for nine years.
Finally, maturation
They had plenty to say about Tatu the player–competitive, fiery, a player who still wants the ball in crunch time. They called him a man proud of his sport and his accomplishments, though he never talks about his achievements, not even to his wife, who usually learns about them from friends.
The biggest difference in Tatu, after 11 seasons, is that he has grown up. He said he was a “baby” when he arrived in Dallas in 1984. He was almost a cartoon. He never really cared for the two things that made him the most famous–the nickname and the tossed shirt–but he went along with both for the good of the game.
Now, he is ready to move on. “Another two good years,” he said. “Then, after that, somebody else has to take over.”
He knows the end of his career is near, and it doesn’t seem to bother him. He said he has to “trick” himself to stay motivated now, another scoring title, 1,000 goals, always something. A fear of losing always worked, but even that has lost something. “The next day after a loss used to be the worst day of my life,” he said. “Now, I see my kids and it’s all gone.”
He has a wife, Lene, and sons Andre, 5, and Evan, 3. As that family grows, his other wanes. His mother, Mercedes, died last year of a heart attack; his father, Irineu, already has lost a leg to diabetes.
His father gave him his nickname and his drive. People called Irineu “Tatu”–Portuguese for armadillo–because of the work he did in the train yards. Irineu’s oldest son, Jose Roberto, became Tatu, and so did young Antonio Carlos. The name stuck in soccer because it was short, and Antonio Carlos hated it. “Who would be called Tatu?” he said.
He only thought it was bad until he came to America, where few knew much Portuguese, but most had seen “Fantasy Island.” “The plane! The plane!” became a familiar chant in arenas. In time, he got used to it. Lene, whom he met in Dallas, calls him Tatu, too. She calls him Tony only when in crowds, and she’s trying to avoid drawing attention to him.
He couldn’t avoid it on a soccer field. Neither his father nor his brother was proficient in the sport. His father was “very dirty” in soccer, he said, smiling.
But Irineu, the dirty armadillo, expected the best from his youngest.
“He’d come in after a game and ask me how many goals I scored,” Tatu said. “Never `Did you win?’ or `Did you have fun?’ `How many goals?’ If one, then so-so. Two was good. Three or more, great.
“I realize it’s not if you win, but how many goals you score.”
A new perspective
A long time passed before he learned otherwise. Now, he wants to teach the right way. He has run his own soccer camps and coached youth teams. One of his teams, FC Lynx, an under-19 club, beat Uruguay in the Dallas Cup last year, a feat he ranks among his MVP awards and championships. This year, he’s helping with the ’83 Sting girls team.
The idea of coaching intrigues him, either in the new outdoor league or with the Sidekicks, though he notes pointedly that the interest has not been reciprocated.
Tatu’s teammates believe he has mellowed enough to make the transition to coaching. “If he had to do it next year, it would be an adjustment,” Rusty Troy said. “It’s hard to control a game from the sideline, and he’s one player who can do that, at any moment.”
Tatu has carried a team–maybe an entire league–almost from the start. At 19, he was expected to be the best player for Tampa Bay of the North American Soccer League. He said he had to grow up too fast, had to do things he didn’t really want. His agent came up with the gimmick of throwing his jersey to the crowd after goals. The idea was borrowed from a Sao Paulo player who was fined every time he refused to keep his shirt on. “He was such a character, he didn’t care,” Jago said.
Tatu is not a character. But he knew they had to sell soccer in America.
“Some people come to see crazy guy throw his jersey; some people come to see my chest,” he said, shrugging. “At least they look at soccer. If jersey did any help, I’m happy. It conflicts a little bit with me. People think, `This guy’s a hot dog.’ No. I’m a good player. I don’t have to throw the jersey for people to realize that. I don’t want to throw the jersey. But sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for the good of the game.”
His love of the game is obvious to his family and teammates. He takes it as seriously off the field as on, and would demand the same from his players.
“Everything is a job,” he said. “A coach should demand no less than your boss demands from you. This is your job, your life. Good and bad comes with it. If you’re responsible person, hard worker, you deserve some breaks.”
He thought a moment.
“If you’re a cheater,” he said, looking up from his lunch, “you don’t.”
He is a perfectionist, all the way down to the shoes standing in rows like soldiers in his closet. On game day, Lene leaves the house early with the boys to give Tatu room to prepare himself.
He reads his Bible before games and travels with it. His idea of socializing is eating out occasionally. “If we were to keep a diary of him,” Jago said, “the only time he stepped outdoors would be to take his kids out or to play or coach soccer.”
The home front
Lene met him through soccer, when a friend invited her to play in a league.
“Where do we play?” Lene asked.
“At Tatu’s,” the woman said.
“At a tattoo parlor?”
They dated three years before marrying in 1988. She has some difficulty thinking of him as a sex symbol, not this man she calls “a homebody.” He has soccer and his sons and a satellite dish, which is enough.
The money is not nearly as good as it once was. In 1987, when the Sidekicks won the league title, Tatu’s base salary was $200,000, which is more than the entire payroll for the current team.
“Right now, they make it a part-time job,” Tatu said. “I never did anything like that. No matter how much you make, a dollar or a million or a zillion, you play hard.
“To me, if it doesn’t change, it will push me away.”
Part of him isn’t sure if it isn’t time, anyway.
“My father told me most difficult thing in life is having your own house,” he said. “Once you have that, you’ve made it. That sticks in my head.”
He has a house here and 15 more rental properties in Brazil, which his brother manages. He has a good wife and two fine sons and no regrets about coming to play here.
What more is there?
“Early in my life, soccer was always No. 1,” he said. “Now it’s changed. Soccer is taking a back seat. I don’t like to lose, but now, when I do, it is beautiful to walk off the field and see my kids, laughing.”
