# The Northeast and the Brasileirão

> Two teams out of twenty. A share that was once half the table, and once zero.

- Author: Marcello Oliveira (https://mrcll.me/about/)
- Published: Nov 3, 2026
- Topics: Off the code
- URL: https://mrcll.me/stories/northeast-brasileirao/

Five games in fifteen days. In 2022 Fortaleza hosted São Paulo, flew to play Vitória, Botafogo and Alianza Lima, and came home for Fluminense. That is 10,362 km in a straight line, and the flight is not always chartered.

The 2023 Série A started with 2 Northeastern clubs out of 20, or 10%. It has been very different. In 1962, 9 of the clubs in the Taça Brasil, half the field, came from the Northeast. In 1967, in the Torneio Roberto Gomes Pedrosa, there were none. Today’s share sits closer to the region’s slice of GDP, 13.6%, than to its share of the population, 30%.

There are many reasons for that, and distance weighs more than most, because the calendar never stops to let anyone recover. Here is what a season of travel looks like.

> Interactive figure (TravelChart): open the web version at https://mrcll.me/stories/northeast-brasileirao/

To play the 2023 Série A, Fortaleza travels 44,006 km in a straight line. The São Paulo clubs travel 11,992.

And still: Fortaleza became the first Northeastern club to play the Libertadores in consecutive years, 2022 and 2023, and in 2022 drew the two biggest crowds of the group stage, 50,429 paying fans against Colo-Colo and 48,867 against River Plate. Every league table hides a cost it does not show. In this one, it is the distance.