In his first year at the helm of Cruzeiro and with access to the elite of the Brazilian Championship, former striker Ronaldo recognizes that he had difficulties in understanding the financial reality of the club and imagines better days for next year.
“We were happy with the sporting result. In the administrative area, it took us a long time to take the actions we needed, until we really discovered the size of the debt”, stated Ronaldo.
“The next few years will already be a little easier with organized debts. So, I hope to have better days from next year”, added the owner of the club where he started his career as an athlete.
The assessment now is very different from what Ronaldo said in the first interview he gave after announcing, on December 18 last year, the purchase of Cruzeiro for R$ 400 million.
“Every day we open a drawer, we find a negative surprise”, he said, at the time when the club’s debts approached R$ 1 billion.
“I would say that Cruzeiro is a patient in serious condition, in the ICU, and we are offering the necessary treatment to get him out of that condition.”
The team’s management prepared a judicial recovery plan based on the incentives provided for by the law that establishes the SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol), among them, installment payments and the discount of interest and corrections.
The proposal to pay the creditors was presented to the Justice, which must schedule a meeting for approval of the agreements.
One of the most successful teams in the country, Cruzeiro has been surviving a technical crisis and is trying to recover the prestige of its image. In the same year that it fell to the second division, the association became a police case.
The Civil Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Minas Gerais began to investigate alleged embezzlement of resources, ideological falsehood and forgery of documents that occurred in 2018 and 2019 —in the management of Wagner Pires de Sá. The criminal action is processed in secrecy in court.
At its start in Serie B, the team felt the blow by losing almost half of its revenues and was punished by Fifa (International Football Federation) with the loss of points due to debts with Al Wahda, from the United Arab Emirates.
As a comparison, the association recorded revenues of BRL 224 million only from TV rights and the sale of athletes in 2019, against BRL 61 million in 2020, the first season in which it learned about the financial reality of Série B.
After two failed attempts to return to the main division, Cruzeiro had an almost impeccable campaign this year and gained access to seven rounds of the end of the competition.
With the achievement, the board predicts revenue in the range of R$ 200 million for 2023. The idea is to double that amount in 2025. In 2021, revenue was R$ 115 million – this year’s accounts have not yet been closed.
On the field, the goals are still below what Cruzeiro fans are used to seeing. The plan is, at the very least, to get a place in the Copa Sudamericana and advance to the round of 16 of the Copa do Brasil.
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