Ceará players are applauded after crying in defeat – 07/03/2023 – Sport

When the referee Ingrede Santos whistled the end of the game, the audience of about 300 people stood up and applauded the Ceará players on Saturday morning (4). The electronic scoreboard at the Presidente Vargas stadium, in the central region of Fortaleza, pointed to the home team’s 2-0 defeat by São Paulo.

The context of the match, valid for the first division of the Brazilian women’s football championship, explains the support of the fans even in the face of a setback.

On February 25, Ceará lost by an incredible 14-0 to Corinthians, in the competition’s debut, in Mogi das Cruzes (SP). Goalkeeper Ingrid’s cry on the lawn reverberated inside and outside the field of football and opened up the club’s lack of investment in the women’s team a year after rising from the second to the first division.

Twenty days earlier, for the Super Cup, Ceará had already suffered another defeat, 10-0, against Flamengo, in Rio.

The routs showed the opposite of the climate of victory in 2022. On September 17, the Ceará women’s team was champion of the second division. But soon after, on November 9, Ceará’s men’s team was relegated. Twenty days later, the club’s management began to dismiss professionals from various areas, including female players.

From the end of November to mid-December, Ceará dismissed the women’s coach, Erivelton Viana, and 20 players.

There are four professionals left. The rest of the team was made up of girls between the ages of 14 and 17. The young team with little experience faced teams made up of athletes from the Brazilian team, which in July will compete in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

“My granddaughter was one of those who stayed. She has been in Ceará since she was 12, she loves this club. But it was a sad situation, for everyone. But, apparently, the board understood and brought some reinforcements, today the team is already it was much better, it competed”, said retired Joaquim Severiano Soares, 63, grandfather of the defender and captain Rebeca, 19, who followed his granddaughter’s game at Presidente Vargas.

“You have to applaud the girls, they showed determination, will. They honored Vozão’s shirt”, said Carlos Aparecido Ferreira, 42, who took his son Mariano, 6, to watch the game on Saturday morning with some clouds in the sky of Fortaleza.

The club’s management advised the players not to give interviews. In social networks, the manifestations of the athletes avoid criticism.

“It doesn’t matter the result, the score or who won. But that we can come out with our heads up and say that we did our best”, wrote striker Amália, 20, after the 14-0 victory for Corinthians.
“Job’s patience and Abraham’s faith”, posted Rebeca after the 10-0 win against Flamengo.

The negative repercussion of the 24 goals conceded in two games in the year made Ceará’s board of directors move: there was a change in the technical command, with the entry of David Lopes, who was the under-14 men’s coach.

Felipe Soares, who was on the women’s base in 2022 and led the girls in the two defeats suffered, remained on the commission as an assistant to Lopes.

Seven professional players were hired, some of them with experience in the national elite, and this was reflected in their performance on the field: the defeat to São Paulo was by a normal score, and Ceará created goal chances. There was even one correctly annulled for offside, at the end of the first half, scored by Ester.

At the end of the confrontation, the players embraced and, hand in hand, greeted the applauding fans.

“The opportunity was given to them to participate in a national competition, to work. It has the impact of goals and crying, but the athletes are happy with the opportunity. We are aligning the psychological and social assistance department from the male base to the female base , but there is no war inside, there is work”, said Eduardo Arruda, administrative director of Ceará and responsible for the women’s department.

After two rounds, the team from Ceará is the bottom of the Brasileirão, with two defeats, 16 goals conceded and none scored. The penultimate placed is Real Ariquemes, from Rondônia, who conceded 15 goals. In the next round, Ceará faces Bahia.

Men’s downgrade

After five years in the Brazilian men’s Série A, Ceará was relegated in 2022 and saw its budget for 2023 plummet.

Last year, the club forecast revenues of R$163 million, the highest in its 108-year history. With the drop in division, all revenues, but mainly those from transmission rights, decreased, and the budget for this year is BRL 89 million, the lowest since 2019.

In 2022, the planned investment for women’s football was already small, around R$ 1.6 million, but it served to assemble a competitive team that managed the A2 Series, and access happened. The 2023 budget, approved last Friday (3) by the club’s Deliberative Council, does not specify the scheduled amount for the women’s professional department, but the idea was to spend much less than the previous year.

After the 10-0 defeat by Flamengo in the Supercopa, a tournament that starts the women’s football season in Brazil, the board of Ceará considered disbanding the team and giving up the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A1, found out Sheet.

The idea did not go ahead because the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) warned the club from Ceará that the attitude could even have consequences for the men’s team in Serie B, based on the licensing rule that obliges associations in the first divisions of men to have women’s teams. .

There was also another obstacle, this financial one: Ceará adhered, in 2015, to Profut, the football fiscal responsibility law that provides for the payment of debts with the government with lower interest rates, but requires counterparts. One of them is having a professional women’s team. The club could be excluded from Profut.

“After the end of the season, we dismissed some athletes and started to study the financial part, but the political situation of the club hindered the process in the feminine, there was no malice of the club”, said Arruda.

The pressure for the relegation of the men’s team made President Robinson de Castro resign on February 9. An interim was sworn in, Carlos Moraes, but an election is scheduled for March 29 to choose a new president. Only members of the Deliberative Council will vote.