He still dreams of the horses. They roam the fields and ranches around São Mateus, stroll untethered along the roadside, take morning constitutionals on the sand. There are pedigree breeders and rodeo shows dotted around the province. When he was a kid he used to ride the life out of them, but he doesn’t really do that any more for insurance reasons. Instead, he owns and breeds them, tracks their progress through pictures and videos sent by family members, a little slice of Espírito Santo flickering on a phone screen in Manchester.
For him the horse represents home, hearth, familiar comforts, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s freedom, the open pasture, the ability to go where you want, at whatever pace you want, for whatever reason you want. But of course you don’t just get on a horse and ride. It takes months, years, to build that understanding, to kindle the magic, to train without ever quite taming. For Savinho the equestrian, as with Savinho the footballer, the only true freedom comes through a long, disciplined process of control.
