The streak started in late October. Canelas 2010, an unheralded amateur soccer team, suddenly could not stop winning. It went 10 straight matches without dropping a point, without so much as conceding a goal, a surge that brought the prospect of promotion out of its local league and into the comparative big time of the national third divisio.

Nobody came to see Canelas, though. Nobody could. There was nothing to watch. Though each of those results was officially recorded as a 3-0 Canelas win, none of the matches actually happened.