Brazilians buy English team and are called ‘City of the 11th division’

In conversation with a client, Guilherme Decca, 44, heard about an English third division club that was for sale. He remembered the years sitting in the stands of Morumbi in São Paulo games and thought: why not take a look?

“The numbers were crazy. An unfeasible business,” he says, commenting on the debts. As he signed a confidentiality document, he cannot reveal the name of the team.

That was all it took for him and his partner André Ikeda, 35, to be bitten by the blue fly of being top hats. They became owners of Wakefield AFC, which plays in the Sheffield & Hallamshire Senior Football League. Translation: the 11th division of football in England.

It seemed to them the best opportunity to start a project from scratch and grow in the country’s league pyramid. There were other possibilities, but they could be financial disasters.

“Football can be a terrible investment. We saw several clubs from different divisions, all with very serious problems. They owed a lot or the stadium was from another one, among other problems. There is a 6th division team that owes 20 million pounds (about R$ 150 million at the current price). That doesn’t exist. There are several with a lot of tradition, more than 100 years of history, but without any heritage,” says Decca.

The two Brazilians are used to risk and make a living from it. They are the founders of VO2 Capital, a family business that buys global bonds and stocks in the United States, where they live. It is a manager that invests in properties and companies not listed on the stock exchange (private equity). They earn a share of the income earned by the customer.

It was not difficult, then, to assess what would be an overly dangerous investment in football.

“When we analyzed it, Wakefield made perfect sense. It’s in a city of 350,000 people, in a division down there, where we can get it wrong in the beginning, and without debt. What took more work was convincing my wife, who found one bad idea,” explains Decca, referring to his wife Veronica.

Wakefield is the biggest city in the UK without a professional football club. “Professionals” are teams that are between the first (the Premier League) and the fourth division. But in the real world it doesn’t work that way. Almost all teams on the farm (already considered semi-professional) pay salaries to athletes. The same goes for some of the Friday.

An 11th division club receiving foreign investment has caused distrust in the city. Authorities and part of the fans had to be convinced that the Brazilians were not there just for profit, but for a long-term project.

Opponents were outraged.

“They say we are the Manchester City of the league, that we’re going to buy access”, laughs Decca, even for the grace of a cast from such a low league to be compared to another that belongs to the UAE royal family and was a finalist in the Champions League last season.

The table shows no such superiority. The Brazilians took full control of Wakefield last month, although they had been involved since August. The team occupies 8th place in the table. He is 13 points behind leaders Swinton Athletic but has three games in hand.

The concern at the moment is to strengthen the team not with players, but with scouts, people capable of taking care of statistics and looking for new athletes. Offering a chance to young people, especially those dismissed by larger clubs, is a possibility. Right-back Mason Rubie was from the under-19 squad of Leeds United, in the Premier League.

The idea is to strengthen ties with the community. The new owners are looking for land to build a training center with two fields of artificial turf. Space that, during the week, can also be used by schools in the region. It’s also a way to get fans. The average attendance at Wakefield games as home team is 600 people.

“We have a budget that will be respected, we know how much can be spent per position, per player. We have people who are knowledgeable about football running the project. It’s something for the long term. It’s not about moving up seven divisions in seven years,” says Decca .

VO2 programmers put together software to analyze game data. The information is passed on to the technical committee. Accustomed to the financial market, Brazilians also found a new and unexpected passion. Cheer for a team that until recently had never heard of and that is on another continent.

“It’s more distressing than watching your son play. It’s an anxiety that has no explanation,” says Guilherme Decca.

They are the second Brazilian experience with ownership of English clubs. Businessman Diego Lemos closed a deal to buy Morecambe (now in the third division) at the end of 2016. The experience lasted a few months, no payment was made and Lemos left town accused of not even paying his bill at the stadium bar.