Auto Esporte

Taxi drivers in João Pessoa formed the club themselves in 1936, which explains a nickname that has stuck ever since: O Clube do Povo, the people's club, and a name — Auto Esporte — that has nothing to do with cars in the modern sense and everything to do with who founded it.

The honours board reads oddly for a club its age: six state championships, the last of them in 1992, and nothing at that level since. What has kept Auto Esporte busy in the decades after is the Second Division of the Campeonato Paraibano, which it has won three times — 1968, then 2006 and 2024 — each time as the answer to a relegation. The 2024 title followed the same pattern as the others: drop down, win the second tier, come back up.

Home games are played at the Estádio Evandro Lélis, known locally as Mangabeirão, a ground that holds 2,000 and is a step down from the Almeidão, the larger stadium the club used before. Fixtures against Botafogo-PB carry a name of their own, Botauto, the fixture Paraíba football builds its calendar around.

The goalkeeper Euflásio left a mark less for his own performances than for what he spotted in someone else: it was Euflásio who discovered Durval. That kind of detail is what the club's history runs on more than silverware — Auto Esporte has never gone past the early rounds of the Copa do Brasil in any of its three appearances, in 1991, 1993 and 2012, and a run at national level to match its standing in the state is the one thing still missing.