Controversial and visionary, Petraglia may name the Athletico-PR stadium on its centenary – 02/25/2024 – Sports

Athletico-PR’s top scorer in the Libertadores, alongside strikers Lima and Marco Rúben, former right-back Luisinho Netto says he still learned in the dressing room at the Santa Cruz stadium, in Ribeirão Preto, the real meaning of the “Petraglia way”.

The term he had heard years before arriving at the club from Paraná, in 1997, started to make sense to him after a 2-1 defeat to Botafogo-SP, in the penultimate round of the Brazilian Championship that year. The stumble put an end to the team’s chances of qualifying for the quarter-finals of the competition. Petraglia raised his tone and said that no one would ruin his dream of making the club one of the biggest in the country.

“He said: ‘I want it to be clear that no one is going to ruin my dream. There’s no harm in sending everyone away and creating a new team next year. I need you to believe once and for all that Athletico will be much bigger than it is. today'”, Luisinho told Sheet.

Described by those who know him as a difficult visionary, the gaucho lawyer from Cruzeiro do Sul (120 km from Porto Alegre) and raised in Curitiba carries both respect and controversial positions.

The most recent episode involves the change of the official name of the Ligga Arena (so called due to naming rights), from Joaquim Américo Magalhães to his own, Mário Celso Petraglia. An extraordinary meeting of the Deliberative Council this Monday (26) will seal the decision.

“We were taken by surprise and, of course, we didn’t react well. We didn’t agree with the idea of ​​taking away the tribute paid to an icon in the history of Paraná sports who was the creator of the stadium. My great-grandfather sold horses from his stud farm to create this structure” , Flávio Guimarães told Sheet.

Magalhães was the founder of the Internacional Foot-Ball Club, which, a hundred years ago, gave rise to Club Atlético Paranaense. The stadium has carried his name since 1933.

“The chairman of the board [Aguinaldo Coelho de Farias] He already told us that everyone is convinced to approve the idea, they called the family to let them know. They suggested making memorials and trying to honor us in another way. It is a shame. In Athletico’s centenary year, erase history. Petraglia really deserves a tribute, but not like this”, says Flávio.

As it is a private space, the case is different from the 2019 bill that aimed to change the name of the Rei Pelé stadium, in Maceió, to Rainha Marta. The action foundered because areas belonging to the Union cannot be attributed to people still alive.

Former midfielder Cocito says he actually lived through the emergence of the new Athletico — by the hand and with all of Petraglia’s fingerprints. He arrived at the club in 1998, coming from Botafogo-SP, and remained until 2003, in his first spell.

“In fact, he was a visionary. Firstly, he thought about the physical structure. What they saw as a cost, he understood as an investment. He was always dissatisfied”, he reports.

“When I returned to the club at his invitation, in 2017, to coordinate the base, it seemed like nothing was good. And it was already very good. I wanted to improve everything: new cutting-edge equipment for performance and school for the base kids within the CT” .

The relationship between top hat and club intensified from April 16, 1995, when he led the movement known in the association as the “1995 revolution”.

Upset by a 5-1 defeat suffered by arch-rival Coritiba in the state championship that year, in addition to R$6 million in debts, he proposed that then-president Hussein Zraika resign from his position. He took over the club alongside businessmen Ademir Adur and Enio Fornea weeks later.

In the first season, he won Série B with the attack formed by Paulo Rink and Oséas. In 1996, he went to the knockout stages of the Brasileirão. In 1999, he opened the Caju training center, one of the most respected and modern in the country, and renovated the Arena da Baixada — the stadium’s most common nickname. In 2000, the team competed in the Libertadores for the first time.

The sale of names such as Kleberson, Lucas, Jadson, Fernandinho, Hernani, Bruno Guimarães, Renan Lodi, Rony Léo Pereira and, recently, Vítor Roque, for €74 million — including fixed amounts, bonuses and taxes — boosted revenues.

The relationships, however, were always troubled. Adur and Fornea left the club seven years after the “revolution”. Petraglia said in 2005, the year of the first Libertadores final, that “absolutely nothing was completed” and that the project was only “halfway through”.

“When I came back from a loan from Grêmio, in 2004, I had an offer from Sporting Braga, from Portugal. He said no, that I would stay so we could win the 2005 Libertadores. We reached the final, there wasn’t much left. After that, he released me”, remembers Cocytus.

Petraglia was disaffected by Eurico Miranda, former Vasco manager. He even said in an interview with Fox Sports, in 2015, that he almost attacked him at a meeting of the 13 Club for not allowing him to speak.

On several occasions, he fired shots at the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation) and was banned from the sport in 1997 for his involvement in an arbitration scandal with Ivens Mendes, former president of the extinct Conaf (National Football Arbitration Commission), and Alberto Dualib , from Corinthians.

On that occasion, he told Sheet that his enemies took advantage of the situation to reduce his performance in the Clube dos 13. The sentence was overturned by the TJD (Court of Sports Justice) almost a year later.

He was only out of the presidency between 2009 and 2011, the year in which the club was relegated.

Last June, Petraglia requested an indefinite leave of absence “for health treatment and on medical recommendation”, shortly after undergoing reconstructive surgery on her intestine and abdomen.

He resumed in October talking about transforming Athletico into a SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol) as a possible last mission at the head of the club, classifying the associative model, used by most teams, as “failed”.

Champion of the Brazilian Championship (2001), the Brazilian Cup (2019) and the South American Cup (2021), he can be immortalized, also with the arena, in the centenary year of the Hurricane.