Tatu Elected to National Soccer Hall of Fame
The Brazilian forward scored 857 regular-season indoor goals and helped the Dallas Sidekicks win four championships.
Francisco Marcos had a plan for Tatu’s outdoor debut with the Tampa Bay Rowdies on May 29, 1982. After scoring, the 20-year-old Brazilian would run to the bench, pull off his jersey and throw it into the stands.
Marcos, the team’s vice president, would hand him a fresh shirt.
Tatu scored 10 minutes into the match against the Edmonton Drillers and sprinted 80 yards to the bench. Marcos couldn’t find the replacement jersey, so Tatu hugged coach Gordon Jago instead.
“I told him he’d just have to score another one, and we’d get it right the second time,” Marcos told the St. Petersburg Times.
Tatu obliged. He broke a 1-1 tie in the 79th minute, raced to the retaining wall and threw his No. 10 jersey into the Tampa Stadium stands. The crowd of 25,389 saw the Rowdies go on to win 4-1.
“I don’t care if he throws a half-dozen shirts into the stands,” Jago told the Tampa Tribune. “I’ll supply them — and pay costs.”
Throwing his jersey into the crowd became Tatu’s signature celebration. Over a 21-year career, he gave fans plenty of chances to catch one. He scored 857 regular-season indoor goals, won six scoring titles and five MVP awards, and played on four championship teams.
Tatu was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame on the Veteran Ballot. He will be inducted April 16, 2027, in Frisco, Texas.
He demonstrated persistence, resilience and brilliance, playing in eight leagues over the course of his career. He is the third indoor player to be elected to the Hall of Fame, following in the footsteps of Slavisa “Steve” Zungul (2023) and Kevin Crow (2026).
Asked in 2022 what election to the Hall would mean to him, Tatu told the Major Arena Soccer League it would rank above any of his championships.
“That would be the ultimate reward for my career,” he said. “I think that will top everything: all the championships, all the good things that happened in the sport for me. I think that would be the ultimate.
“If someday that happens, trust me, I’ll be as excited as hell.”
Tatu was born Antonio Carlos Pecorari on Feb. 1, 1962, in Mairinque, Brazil. His nickname started with his father.
“In Portuguese, tatu means ‘armadillo,’” he told the National Catholic Register in 2020. “Daddy used to work in a train station, so he was always under the train, checking the brakes and things like that. An armadillo is always under the grass, so people started calling my father Tatu.”
His older brother also went by Tatu. As a boy, he was known as Tatuzinho, or little armadillo. The shorter name eventually stuck.
“If you call me Antonio Carlos, my given name, I will not answer,” he said. “Tatu. That’s it.”
He did not always have aspirations to play professionally. In school, Tatu wrote a paper about how he planned to become an engineer when he grew up.
His teacher predicted he’d play professional soccer.
Even his tryout with his favorite club, São Paulo, came about by chance. A cousin had business in the city and offered him a ride. The coaches asked Tatu to come back, and he eventually played for the club.
In 1981, he scored five goals in an indoor exhibition, catching Jago’s attention. The Rowdies brought him in on loan from São Paulo. Tatu’s goal was simple: He hoped to earn enough to buy a house back home.
“I never thought I would stay,” he told The New York Times in 2002. “I thought I would be here three months at most.”
In his first North American Soccer League indoor game, Tatu scored a hat trick in an 8-6 victory over the Jacksonville Tea Men on Dec. 19, 1981.
“He positions himself well,” teammate Peter Roe told the Tampa Times. “If he can do that all season, he’ll score three goals every game.”
No jerseys were thrown into the stands that night. The jersey toss came when he returned for the outdoor season.
By the time Tatu was playing for the Dallas Sidekicks, the team typically kept half a dozen No. 9 jerseys on the bench. On at least one occasion, they ran out. He threw fewer on the road, where fans sometimes threw them back.
Tatu estimated to Sports Illustrated that he tossed about 600 jerseys over the years.
“He’s not doing the shirt thing to put it in your face,” Crow told Sports Illustrated in 1987. “He’s doing it to put people in the stands. Everybody is for that.”
Tatu saw it much the same way.
“If it would bring more fans to the games, I’d have thrown my shorts into the stands after every goal.”
Tatu joined the Sidekicks for the 1984-85 season and spent the rest of his playing career with Dallas, also playing for the Wichita Wings in 1993-94 while the Sidekicks competed in a summer league. In his highest-scoring season, 1990-91, he recorded 78 goals and 66 assists.
He reached 1,000 career points in a victory over the San Jose Grizzlies in September 1995. The following August, he passed Zungul as indoor soccer’s career scoring leader with his 716th goal against the Sacramento Knights.
Eight days later, he broke Zungul’s career points record, reaching 1,254 against the Indianapolis Twisters. At halftime, Tatu received four plane tickets to visit relatives in Brazil, one of his soccer boots cast in bronze and a Rolex from his wife and two sons.
When Jago retired as coach in 1998, Tatu took over. In his first season as player-coach, he led the Sidekicks to a championship and earned both MVP and Coach of the Year honors.
“He should have wrapped it up a long time ago and given us some relief,” San Diego Sockers coach Brian Quinn told the Associated Press in 2003. “I retired. All these other people have retired. But Tatu keeps chugging along, scoring goals.”
Tatu made the 2002-03 season his last as a player. He finished his indoor career the way he began it, scoring a hat trick on March 23, 2003, in a 14-8 loss to the Baltimore Blast.
“I did what I could for the game,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I’m not going to retire saying I could have done more. I gave everything I had.”
Tatu stayed with the Sidekicks as a full-time coach for the 2003-04 season, earning Coach of the Year honors. He returned to coach Dallas from 2012 to 2015 and went on to lead the nearby Mesquite Outlaws from 2019 to 2024.
He also coached in North Texas schools, leading The Highlands School in Irving to three state championships and Prince of Peace Christian School in Carrollton to seven. He coached girls’ teams for the Sting Soccer Club as well.
“I love the teaching part of the game,” he told the Major Arena Soccer League in 2022. “I’m old school, and I believe you make the player better and automatically the team is better because the individual gets better.”
In September 2026, Texas Lone Star SC named Tatu its director of coaching, bringing him back to the Dallas indoor game with a club in Major Arena Soccer League Women.
“He is a Dallas soccer icon who helped shape the history of indoor soccer in this city,” principal owner Pia Namdar said in announcing the hire. “This is about honoring the legacy of the game while building something new for the next generation.”