The Brazilian Football Confederation bought the property in 1978 and spent the next nine years converting it from a general-purpose training facility into the headquarters it would become. The location chose itself. Teresópolis had been a hill station for wealthy cariocas since the 19th century, a place people escaped to when the Rio summer became unbearable. The Carlos Guinle neighborhood, where the compound stands, was already developed with colonial-style houses set among Atlantic Forest remnants and Araucaria pines. The altitude of roughly 900 meters gave the training sessions consistently cooler temperatures than coastal Rio. The surrounding forest gave them privacy. Journalists who wanted to photograph Ronaldo's knee had to work at it. Fans who wanted to glimpse their heroes stood at a specific fence and hoped.

The facility served as headquarters for Brazil's preparations for five FIFA World Cups between 1990 and 2010. In 1994, the preparation culminated in the fourth championship, won in the United States. In 2002, it contributed to the fifth, the Korea-Japan triumph. 1990 and 2010 ended earlier, in the round of 16 and the quarterfinals respectively. The exception was 2006, when coach Carlos Alberto Parreira decided to keep the squad training in Europe rather than fly them back to Teresópolis — a choice much debated in the Brazilian press afterward, particularly after the team lost to France in the quarterfinals. The returning-to-Granja tradition was restored for 2010, and then, with the greatest possible pressure attached, for 2014 when Brazil hosted the tournament and spent heavily to make the facility World Cup-ready.

For the 2014 World Cup, the CBF spent more than R$15 million rebuilding Granja Comary. The scale of the reconstruction was substantial: Sector 1, containing the players' accommodation, was demolished down to its foundations and rebuilt. Twenty-two double rooms became thirty individual en-suite rooms and six doubles. The sector acquired a games room, a video game room, an exclusive gym, a medical suite, physiotherapy and cryotherapy facilities, a barber, a dentist, a podiatrist, a pharmacy, and a full-service laundry. Sector 2 held the pitches and the dressing rooms; the dressing room spa gained a Jacuzzi, cryotherapy tubs, saunas. The pitches themselves were relaid by the same company that supplied the World Cup stadiums. Everything was state-of-the-art. Then Brazil lost 7-1 to Germany in the semifinal at Belo Horizonte, and the facilities at Granja Comary — spectacular by any measure — could not address what went wrong.

The complex is arranged in five functional sectors, each doing one thing. Sector 1 is residential: only players and technical staff have access, with family visitors received in a dedicated living room. Sector 2 is training: five football fields, one of them FIFA-certified with an Act Global surface, plus dressing rooms and gym. Sector 3 is the multipurpose gym, renovated with new flooring and ceiling. Sector 4 is rehabilitation: physiotherapy space, ice baths, equipment for injured players working their way back. Sector 5 is a small stand facing the training pitches with room for 180 spectators — the closed training session where sponsors and press watch the squad run drills without getting near them. A dedicated press car park and a separate one for guests keep the circulation orderly. When Brazil is in camp, the gate security is tight.

The national team is in residence only a few weeks a year, typically around qualifiers and tournaments. The rest of the time, Granja Comary hosts Clube de Regatas do Flamengo — one of the most popular football clubs in Brazil and in the world — for pre-season training. The arrangement suits both sides. The CBF gets income when the facility would otherwise sit idle; Flamengo gets a World Cup-grade training environment without building one itself. Since the 2011 mudslides that devastated Teresópolis and killed hundreds in the surrounding mountains, Granja Comary has also served as a point of identification for the city globally — the famous place in a place where being famous mostly happens elsewhere. The compound outlasts the careers it shelters. Players come and go. The pines stay.