Washington ex-Flu wins position in Sports with Fufuca – 12/08/2023 – Sports

The Minister of Sports, André Fufuca (PP), decided to choose Athirson, Flamengo’s idol, to be national football secretary. Fluminense’s idol, Washington Coração Valente, will preside over Apfut (Public Football Governance Authority).

Washington is another one of the names from the former government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) who have received space in the portfolio since Fufuca’s arrival — the former striker was national secretary of sport and leisure in the last administration.

He was nominated by the minister’s party, for which he emerged as a candidate for federal deputy in Sergipe, in 2022, but was not elected. Athirson was the name suggested by the acronym’s Rio bench.

Federal deputy and close to the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), Fufuca took over the portfolio in place of Ana Moser amid negotiations between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) with the center.

Since then, Fufuca removed people linked to Moser and the PT from the portfolio and brought in names from the past administration, for example Antonio Paulo Vogel, former number 2 in the Ministry of Education under Bolsonaro (at the time of Abraham Weintraub).

Also currently holding a position in Sports is a former director of Education programs from the previous government, the secretary who took care of fund transfers at the Ministry of Citizenship and a former Codevasf advisor who issued opinions and technical notes on works.

Former basketball player Iziane Costa was announced as a high-performance secretary — from Maranhão, like the minister, she became a candidate for the then PSL. She takes the place of Marta Sobral, basketball silver medalist at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, and bronze medalist in Sydney-2000, and who was a candidate for the PT.

Diogo Silva, 2007 Pan-American champion in taekwondo and who was Ana Moser’s right-hand man, was made coordinator.

The two names now chosen by Fufuca were already speculated to have a position, especially the football secretariat, which was under the command of José Luis Ferrarezi, former PT councilor.

Washington served as federal deputy from the end of November 2018 to April 2019, a period in which he worked alongside Fufuca in the Chamber.

The attacker was a substitute for Onyx Lorenzoni (then at DEM), who left his position to take over the Bolsonaro government’s transition team and, later, the Civil House.

Washington left office precisely to take over the former government’s sports and leisure secretariat, a post in which he remained for a few months, until he was invited to become director at the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation).

Afterwards, the Fluminense idol became a football commentator on television and has now been chosen to take over Apfut — a body created in 2016 by the government of Dilma Rousseff (PT) and which supervises the clubs that are part of Profut (Program for the Modernization of Management and Fiscal Responsibility of Brazilian Football).

Among other functions, the authority supervises team spending and mandatory investment in women’s football and can apply penalties that range up to relegation to a lower division of the Brazilian Championship. The body had been without a head since the beginning of the Lula government.

With Fluminense, Fufuca’s favorite team, Washington was Brazilian champion in 2010 and runner-up in the Libertadores in 2008, an episode even remembered by the current minister on his social networks before the Rio club won the tournament cup this year.

He also played for Athletito-PR, with which he was the top scorer in a single edition of the Brazilian Championship, and for São Paulo.

Athirson was three-time Rio champion with Flamengo and also played for Cruzeiro and Botafogo, among other teams.