Emergency Exit Web — Football Case Study

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Dispatch: a series dedicated to immersive storytelling, where our photographers and writers journey to chosen places, combining evocative imagery with long-form editorials to uncover and share unique football cultures.

A Stadium on the Verge of Disappearance: The final days of the Canindé through Gabriel Borelli’s New Series Emergency Exit

Gabriel Borelli
Jan 31 2026

The Doutor Oswaldo Teixeira Duarte Stadium, better known as Canindé, has been the soul of Associação Portuguesa de Desportos for over 50 years. However, after years of financial crisis, the club has chosen to adopt the SAF model, Sociedade Anônima de Futebol, a corporate structure in which football clubs become joint-stock companies, transferring their management to private investors in search of financial survival. The agreement promises stability, but at a high cost: Canindé is set to become a multi-purpose arena in 2026. Brazilian football has been undergoing a fast process of “arenization,” with historic stadiums being demolished and replaced by profitable arenas where the popular experience becomes a controlled spectacle, leading to the gradual gentrification of football.

Emergency Exit, a new project from Brazil-based Photographer Gabriel Borelli, reflects on the transformation of Brazilian football within a broader historical context that intensified after the 2014 World Cup, which saw a reshaping of architecture and accelerating of elitization around football, restricting access and gradually distancing the sport from its popular and collective roots. Through his project, Gabriel has partnered with Portuguesa to document their 2026 season as the community and club reconcile with losing their beloved home.

"This is not only the end of a physical structure, but the interruption of a way of living football built through proximity and imperfection. Being there now means witnessing a fragile moment, when history is still present but already fading. The project seeks to portray a popular idea offootball that is slowly being erased.”

“This season, the work moves between presence and absence. The stadium appears both full and empty, between moments of collective celebration and silence. The project includes typological portraits of fans, focusing on gestures, expressions, and ways of occupying the stands, as well as images of workers who have been part of the Canindé’s daily life for many years, people whose routines are tied to the stadium and who may lose their positions once it is transformed into an arena. Corridors, tunnels, emergency exits, and worn structures appear as spaces of passage and suspension. Together, these elements form a visual narrative of farewell, shaped by uncertainty, not only about football, but about work, memory, and economic change.”

Gabriel, who began photography in 2020, uses his camera to explore and relate to the world around him while anchoring his work in both documentary and personal approaches. With a background in cinema, Gabriel’s practice follows themes of time, memory and spaces in transition, leading him to create long-term projects such as Emergency Exit.

“Football is one of the clearest places where social, political, and emotional layers intersect in Brazil. It is a space where identity, class, memory, and collective rituals are constantly in tension. I began photographing football as a way to understand these dynamics visually, not from the perspective of the game itself, but from what surrounds it, the stands, the people, the waiting, the loss. Over time, football became a recurring subject because it mirrors broader transformations happening in the country.”

Gabriel will be sharing pieces of Emergency Exits in all of its future forms throughout the next months of 2026 on Football Case Study platforms. Stay tuned for his next installment where we see the important figures uplifting the Serie D club and its home.

Follow Gabriel on Instagram here.

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