This Thursday (4), Cuiabá and Chapecoense face off for the 31st round of the Brazilian Championship, which has very different management models. Since the establishment of the club-company, in 2001, Dorado has been one of the references of the business management model in the country. Santa Catarina’s team, on the other hand, is facing a major financial crisis after its meteoric rise and spectacular period in the last decade, internally discusses the migration from the collaborative model to the joint-stock company.
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The youngest in Serie A, Cuiaba became one of the sensations of the Brazilian Championship. With a 1–0 win in the last game against Bragantino at the Arena Pantanal, Mato Grosso’s team took an important step towards achieving the year’s main objective: to remain in the elite.
The 10th-placed team in the South American classification zone Brasileirao has a record of eight wins, 14 draws and seven losses. And a secret, even financial and administrative, of the association’s good sporting results in recent years lies in the management.
– The operating structure has remained the same from the beginning, with responsible areas, the club was born as a company. Since it is a proprietary team, it is very easy to manage. In Brazil, the topic is growing, I have seen many people discussing about federations, I see it as outdated, football has become too expensive, I think it is time for the Cuban model to be common in the country. It’s a matter of – says Cristiano Dresh, Dorado’s vice president.
Following in Cuiabá’s footsteps, Chapecoense last month approved a change of management to the company model. Faced with a delicate financial reality, councilors and partners voted in favor of the project. Chap is going through a rough time on the field, however, in addition to an impending relegation to Serie B, which will see managers tasked with an even lower budget next season, it is still dealing with $120 million in debt.
In addition to Chapecoense, other Brazilian football clubs are also considering the possibility of transferring the management model to SAF, as in the case of America-MG, Athletico-PR, etc. However, despite there being evidence in Brazil of this issue, only two of the 40 clubs that make up the first and second divisions of the Brazilian Championship have a business format.
In Series C, Botafogo-SP, one of the most traditional teams in the interior of So Paulo, approved the outsourcing of football in late 2018. For the project’s creator, Adalberto Baptista, it’s a viable path, thinking about financial health:
– I am quite sure that the path for institutions will be professionalization and transformation into a company, as has already been done here. Failure in the field can occur with or without S/A, it is not a performance characteristic of a competition. But that is, yes, what can determine a healthier and more stable life in the medium and long term, is what we hit critically.
Sports law expert, Eduardo Carlezo, understands that the transformation of clubs into a company is a process with no return and that we are decades behind when we look at what happens in Europe and the United States:
– The current model of the association has proved to be bankrupt, and it is enough to see the status of many great players in Brazilian football. Therefore, in the years to come, we will undergo a cultural change and, like any change of this nature, it will collide.
