Estádio José Cavalcanti

Patos is small enough that you can see the town behind the far end, and on a wet afternoon the wind comes straight off the flats and drags the ball. The colour of the concrete is a flat blue, picked out by white steps, and the floodlight stands are simple steel towers rather than the curved roofs you find in the bigger cities.

It has been here since 1964, named after the mayor who opened it. The ground is shared between two local clubs, Nacional Atlético Clube and Esporte Clube de Patos. The surface is natural grass, and the touchlines are marked with advertising hoardings that change with the seasons.

The capacity sits at 8,000, a figure that has shifted with the years as regulations tightened and sections of the stands were closed for safety. The attendance record for a friendly against Flamengo in 1986 still belongs to a night when the town turned out in numbers that surprised everyone. Larger clubs have passed through since then — Vasco da Gama, Fluminense, Botafogo — but the stadium itself has not changed much, apart from the LED floodlights that replaced the older lamps.

The entrance tunnel is a dark arch cut into the blue concrete, and the dressing rooms are tucked behind the main stand. There is a small press area and a board for the latest score, but nothing grand. What the ground offers is the sight of the pitch running straight to the horizon, a rarity in modern football.