Coritiba leaders admit mistakes and extol “revolution”

In a letter to the fans, published this Friday (15) on Coritiba’s social networks, the members of the Administrative Council and institutional directors of the club admitted mistakes that culminated in the relegation to Series B.

On the other hand, the top hats celebrated the “revolution” in Alto da Glória, represented by the financial restructuring reinforced by the sale of Coxa’s SAF to the investment fund, Treecorp.

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The text is signed by Juarez Moraes e Silva, Glenn Stenger, Osiris Klamas, Jair José de Souza and Maurício Gulin, representatives of the Administrative Council; and by the institutional directors, Vilson Ribeiro de Andrade, Leonaro Boguszewski and Nadir Elache Filho.

“The last three years have marked a profound transformation in Coritiba. A renaissance in theory and practice”, begins the letter, which goes on to list the financial problems encountered by managers at the turn of 2020 to 2021.

“Coritiba ended its twelfth consecutive year of losses”, he continues, highlighting, then, the process of debt renegotiation and the timely payment of athletes and employees.

The text also lists the increase in the number of members; the increase in the number of Couto Pereira rentals for shows and events; the rise to 20th position in the CBF ranking; and the construction projects for the Campina Grande CT and the revitalization of Couto Pereira, foreseen in the agreement with SAF.

Coritiba top hats admit mistakes that led to relegation

On the other hand, the managers also recognized the planning failures that led Coritiba to yet another relegation to Series B, in a year marked by the biggest investment in the club’s history.

“Fortunately, in most cases, we learn and correct quickly”, says the text, which regrets the low performance of the signings made for the season and highlights the transition to the SAF in the midst of the Series A dispute as an extra factor of difficulties.

Check the full text

The last 3 years have marked a profound transformation in Coritiba. A renaissance in theory and practice. With the end of this management of the Coritiba Foot Ball Club (“Association”), we would like to put on paper a retrospective of where the club was and where it went, so that the members and fans who participated in some way in this moment feel , as much as we are, satisfied with the project they helped to build, as well as carrying with them the lessons learned from this period.

In December 2020, Coritiba ended its twelfth consecutive year of losses, following an unsustainable dynamic of funding investments in football through debts and labor liabilities. The fate of other clubs that followed a similar trajectory made it clear what the consequence would be. Ahead, a 2021 with practically no revenue, with the challenge of structuring the club on and off the field and finding a solution to the debt that, alone, often consumed the club’s cash generation capacity. This was the starting point from which, in the following three years, with the support of fans, partners, employees, service providers, athletes and technical committees, a Revolution began.

Coritiba renegotiated 100% of its debts, whether tax, civil or labor, managing not only to renegotiate values, but especially payment conditions, which allowed the club, for the first time, to have a clear payment schedule aligned with everyone, putting an end to a sequence of lawsuits, blockades and seizures that prevented the club from running its daily operations. Coritiba is once again a club that pays on time. As important as renegotiating hundreds of millions of past obligations was not increasing this liability with new defaults. The market began to recognize Coritiba as an organization that fulfills its obligations, capable of attracting qualified professionals, on and off the field. Coritiba revitalized its membership plans and surpassed the mark of 40 thousand paying members throughout this period.

The union between the club’s political wings and the symbiosis between club and fans was fundamental in reclaiming the pride of being Coxa Branca and in the conviction that the club’s path could, should and deserved to be different, with professional management and positive prospects for long term. Coritiba once again increased the value of its assets, significantly increasing revenue from sponsorships and renting Couto Pereira for shows, consolidating our stadium as a reference for events in southern Brazil. Coritiba actively participated in the conception, negotiation and structuring of the Liga Forte. A years of work that materialized throughout 2023 with the signing of the contract, fundamental for the club’s financial aspirations and for Coritiba’s confirmation among the country’s greats, being in a prominent position in terms of amounts received between the signatory clubs .

Coritiba rose again in the CBF Ranking, fundamental for the management of the youth categories, whose main competitions are only contested by the top 20 in the ranking. The club went from twenty-sixth place in 2021 to twenty-first place in 2023, being on track to return to the top 20 in the coming years. Meanwhile, it competed in and won the Brazilian Under-20 Cup for the first time and once again revealed talents, which should become an even more important source of revenue in the coming years. It’s been a long time since we had as many athletes called up to the Brazilian national team’s youth teams as we have had in this three-year period.

Coritiba developed and advanced with the approval of two projects of utmost importance for its infrastructure: the new Training Center in Campina Grande and the revitalization of Couto Pereira. The execution of both is foreseen in the contract signed with the investment funds managed by Treecorp in the SAF negotiation and should occur over the next few years. Coritiba broke the endless and unsustainable sequence of losses and generated accounting net profit from 2021 to 2023.

In an unprecedented way in its history, the club’s financial situation was balanced, within solid governance and audited by a first-class auditing company. Although we know that in the short term the availability of resources does not guarantee success on the field, we also know that, in the long term, the correlation between the two is high. As this scenario continues, positive results are the natural consequence over time. These achievements and improvements were not easy. Time does not go back to see where the club would have gone if the path had been different in these three years, continuing what was observed in the many previous years. However, it is not difficult to imagine that the SAF, today a reality with expected investments of more than 1.3 billion reais in 10 years, would have been negotiated under very different conditions, not only in terms of values, but also in relation to rights , guarantees and perspectives that the club has protected today.

We see this negotiation, therefore, as a milestone to be celebrated and the seed of fruits that would not have otherwise been possible. Series B itself, which we obviously regret playing in 2024, will be a very different challenge. In 2021, with no available sources of capital, access was gained in a dispute in which clubs like Vasco and Cruzeiro did not achieve the same success. In 2024, Coritiba will be able to plan a good year, return to Série A and solidify the basis of what will become the achievements of the future. We take advantage of this realization to also recognize that we failed. Fortunately, most of the time, we learn and correct quickly. Football is no different from the corporate world, where mistakes precede success, as long as they are identified in time and followed by appropriate lessons learned.

The financial success of this management of the Association, however, would have been even greater if certain contracts had given the return we expected. This could also have enabled better sporting performance, especially in 2023. Likewise, the transition to the SAF being carried out throughout the year, with competitions underway, brought additional challenges. Not only because of the time needed for those who arrived to build their relationships and put their ideas into practice, but also because of the fact that the resources made available to the club, with the operation of SAF and Liga Forte, were only available after the main hiring windows. This mismatch in deadlines removed athletes with whom we negotiated but who chose to remain at other clubs from Coritiba and contributed to a lower-than-expected success rate in signings.

By 2024, we expect a professional and organized club, capable of planning in advance and materializing the ambitions aligned with Treecorp in the operation of the SAF. We hope that the values ​​that marked this management of the Association – ethics, financial responsibility and full compliance with obligations – also mark the management of SAF. We hope to manage football as a business, with Coritiba fans at the center, capable of generating results for shareholders and joy for millions of fans. With these values ​​in practice, we are certain that Coritiba’s future will be the size that its fans deserve.

Thank you to everyone who helped in this reconstruction, which, with the affection and longing we feel for President Renato Follador, intellectual mentor of what we experienced, we allowed ourselves to call the Revolution. The club’s financial revival, made possible in just three years with absolute respect for our history, without any political benefit or use of public resources, was just the first step. Coritiba is alive and ready to make history in the new era of professional football. This note is signed by the members of the Administrative Council and the Institutional Directors of the Association, who supported the club throughout its management and contributed to these advances within their areas of competence.