Portuguese wants to become SAF to regain relevance – 03/29/2024 – Sport

Despite being eliminated by Santos in the quarter-finals of the 2024 Campeonato Paulista, Portuguesa has reasons to celebrate. The traditional Portuguese association achieved its best campaign in the state tournament in the last 13 years, which guaranteed its presence in Series D of the Brazilian Championship in 2025.

After the final whistle, red-green fans present in Vila Belmiro smiled despite the defeat, seeing the harbinger of a revival of the traditional association, which was in the second state division between 2016 and 2022 and has no national division for 2024.

One of the teams that has had the most players called up to the Brazilian national team throughout history (33, including Djalma Santos, Félix, Enéas and Ricardo Oliveira), three-time champion of São Paulo (1935, 1936 and 1973) and runner-up of the Brazilian Championship in 1996, Portuguesa wants to return to playing a more important role in Brazilian football.

To this end, it plans to conclude negotiations to implement the SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol) model by the end of the year, selling the structure of professional football to a group of investors, along the lines of what has already been done in recent years by a series of from Series A clubs, such as Botafogo, Vasco and Cruzeiro.

“SAF is very important for a team in a critical situation like Portuguesa. There is no way out, you just fix the structure with money”, said Antonio Carlos Castanheira, president of the club, in an interview with Sheet in Canindé.

Portuguesa’s debts currently total around half a billion reais, with monthly costs of around R$120,000 to maintain the operation. To be able to pay off the debt and also invest in the formation of a competitive squad for next year’s disputes, Castanheira sees the only alternative as seeking a group of investors with financial power to take over the club’s football.

“Teams like Portuguesa, which have large liabilities, need to restructure themselves to return to being protagonists like they once were. Investment is needed, and SAF really is the way out”, stated the director.

Conversations have been ongoing for around a year and a half, and the club has already adopted the necessary measures to transform itself into a limited liability company. One of the main ones is to segregate football from the club socially, financially and operationally.

“I already implement this model in practice. There is nothing else here at Canindé,” said Castanheira, adding that the entire football operation was transferred to the club’s training center, located on the Ayrton Senna highway. “I hope that, at the latest by the end of the year, we will have the SAF open and functioning, so that we can create a Paulista [em 2025] otherwise, without financial strain.”

The president preferred not to disclose the name of the interested investor, but stated that it was a group linked to football, with an “important fund behind it”.

Investors are currently completing the due diligence phase of the group’s accounts. The president says that when he took office in December 2019, he found 286 pending labor actions. 202 have been settled since then, but there are still civil and tax actions that will need to be resolved by whoever takes over the century-old institution, founded in 1920.

In addition to the naturally time-consuming negotiations involving a business of this type, the conversations were postponed, due to an option made by the club’s management, waiting for a more favorable moment.

In 2020, when the club competed in the second state division and did not have a nationwide competition calendar, the market value attributed to it was approximately R$90 million. Now, with Paulista remaining in the elite for the third year in a row and with guaranteed participation in the national Series D, the value has risen to R$190 million, an increase of more than 100%. “The achievements on the field gave credibility,” stated Castanheira.

When he assumed the presidency of Portuguesa, the club’s accounts were blocked and the Canindé stadium was about to be auctioned. There was no money to pay the water and electricity bills.

The director said he had implemented a financial restructuring process. He closed a series of agreements to start paying off debts and created a marketing nucleus to attract sponsors and revenue.

Thanks to financial support, in this year’s edition of Paulista, with experienced players in the squad, such as Henrique Dourado and Giovanni Augusto, under the command of coach Pintado, Portuguesa had a salary bill of around R$ 1.2 million per month, a largest under the current administration.

Even so, the classification was only obtained because of the competition’s exotic regulations, which allowed the red-green team to advance with just 10 points in 12 games — two points more than relegated Santo André.

For the next state edition and the Series D dispute, the expectation is that the sheet, with the support of SAF, will be significantly larger, with a squad capable of putting the team back into the Paulista knockout stage and winning the access to the Brazilian Series C.

The last time that Portuguesa competed in the first division of the Brazilian Championship was in 2013. That year, they ended up relegated after being punished with the removal of four points due to midfielder Heverton’s irregular lineup. The decision favored Fluminense, who were first in the relegation zone and escaped.

From then on, the team embarked on a downward trajectory. In 2014, it was relegated to Series C; in 2016, for Série D. In 2017, it was eliminated in the first phase in the fourth division of the Brazilian Championship. In 2018, it was left without a national calendar for the first time since 1979.

According to Castanheira, what contributed most to the collapse of the Portuguese association in the last decade was the lack of qualified people to run the team in a responsible manner. For the current president, they were selfless fans, but without the preparation and time to dedicate themselves to the team as they should.

“There is no point in blaming the federation, the Heverton case, the judge. What happened was pure incompetence on the part of the people who were in charge of Portuguesa.”

Castanheira is in his second term, which ends in 2025 — the club’s statute does not allow for a third term. “What is surrounding Portuguesa in terms of people is not good, unfortunately. The fans have to pay attention.”