The team has a partnership with a group that has worked with schools in Barcelona and use chairs that belonged to the Maracanã in their stadium
One of the most traditional clubs within the River, OR Serrano Football, from Petrópolis, has attracted the attention of teams from all over the country for its basic categories. The centennial association, which is proud to be the first to register the star Garrincha, handed over football management to a partner and, as of 2020, has concentrated basic training in Barra da Tijuca. Among the hundreds of kids trying to make it big in soccer, the sons and grandsons of idols of some of Brazil’s leading football fans stand out.
A few days ago, the club announced that it had signed the first professional contract for Adriano Carvalho, son of Adriano Imperador, a striker who defended Flamengo and the Brazilian national team, as well as Inter Milan. The 16-year-old boy, whose name, physiognomy and favorite foot are identical to those of his father, has signed a four-year deal with Serrano even though he has offers from teams that currently have more visibility.
“I already knew the club, many played with me in other schools. I already knew the work of the technical commission, the administration, the physiotherapists,” said the boy. “The structure here is wonderful. Apart from the greats, I think few clubs in Brazil offer this. Serrano has all the equipment we need.”
Indeed, the TC of Barra da Tijuca is modern and deals with sports science. Every day the athletes answer a questionnaire that includes data on hours of sleep, level of tiredness and others. Physical evaluations are frequent and everything is included in the history of the athlete.
The training methodology is also a big draw, and that’s because it has its DNA from Catalonia. Since 2020, Serrano’s football has been managed by Interfut, a football academy that eight years earlier teamed up with Barcelona to bring the Spanish team’s schools to Brazil. The schools were located in Barra da Tijuca, in Rio, and in Barra Funda, in São Paulo.
For Kleber Leite Filho, known as Klebinho, one of the managers in charge of managing Interfut – and now of football at Serrano -, the location of the schools and the methodology of Barcelona were the first factors responsible for attracting the children of athletes to their fields. In Rio, CT do Serrano is located in one of the favorite neighborhoods for footballers. In São Paulo, the school was located in the same region as the CTs of Palmeiras and São Paulo.
The deal with Barcelona ended in 2019. The following year, Interfut entered into a partnership with Serrano. At that time, it stopped being a small school and started investing in grassroots and even professional football. What hasn’t changed is the interest of ball players and former players in seeing their children and grandchildren train at the club. Being in Barra also helps a lot.
“The list is long. We have just signed a contract with Adriano, son of Adriano Imperador; Zico’s grandchildren also trained here; Carli’s son, from Botafogo; Beto’s son, ex Flamengo; Zé Roberto.. If I had to mention all of them, I would surely forget some,” lists Klebinho.
Some of the famous fathers and grandfathers of football are seen watching the boys practice. Adriano, his son, says that he usually sends his father, the Emperor, the videos of the matches of the basic competitions. “If he sees that I lack a submission, he gets pissed. Then he says: ‘you have to do this, this and this’, and then I go there and do it as he wants,” he says. “He IS my father and a great idol. He brings me so much pride and inspiration.”
SAF’s dream
Founded in 1915, the Serrano Football Club, from Petrópolis, in the mountainous region of Rio, begins to live a new era. The club which holds what would be Garrincha’s first professional record and is proud to have shut out Flamengo de Zico’s fourth state championship in 1980, has handed over its football management, is recovering its assets and should soon become a SAF.
Inaugurated in 1951, the Atílio Marotti stadium is the flagship of a legacy that also includes a gymnasium, football pitch and swimming pools, but has barely left the power of the club. Plagued by debts that dragged on for decades, the stadium was pawned and even auctioned off in 2013 for around R$3 million. The scare lasted a week and was overturned, but it was the warning the club needed to save football.
“The club had a debt of between R $ 5 and R $ 6 million. In 2013 there was an auction and Serrano ended up losing the stadium, but we managed to turn it over. We revalued it, which, all time, he stressed that it was worth R $ 25 million. The judge, again in the first instance, saw that it was a very big loss for the club. We overturned it, but we saw that there would be no other way (to put secure the stadium) but to pay off debts”, recalls Alexandre Beck, China, president of Serrano.
Serrano then started a real estate development project to raise funds. The team took a year off from the championships, but the social part continued to work. The problem is that all the proceeds from the court company’s rent, in addition to 30% of what was achieved with the monthly membership fees and also the proceeds from the canteen, have been committed. Maintaining a professional team and taking care of the stadium was almost a utopia at the time.
“We needed a partner, and that’s when Interfut came along. To date, they have fulfilled everything that was agreed in the contract and have proven to be a reliable partner. We intend to continue this partnership for a long time,” says China.
The agreement is in the third year of a contract initially envisaged for ten years, possibly extendable for an equal period. “It’s football management. What we have today with Serrano is pre-SAF. We manage the stadium; they didn’t have a training center, so we do it here (in Barra da Tijuca),” says Kleber Leite Filho, one of the managers of Interfut and manager in charge of football in Serrano. Klebinho is the son of former Flamengo president Kleber Leite.
The improvements in the stadium are already visible, all the more so considering that it is a nearly abandoned 72-year-old building. “We have changed the grass, now it is Greenleaf, which makes the lawns of some of the main stadiums in Brazil. We are making improvements, we have already renewed the electrical part, the changing rooms, improved the stands, we are also trying to take care of the lighting to play at night,” explains Klebinho.
Virtually all of the stadium’s 6,000 seats were equipped with Maracanã chairs, the ones that were removed from Rio’s main stadium in the renovation carried out ahead of the 2007 Pan American Games. they had been installed.
The natural course, admitted by both China and Klebinho, is to turn Serrano into a SAF. “It brings advantages due to legislation, taxation. The model is more functional. It is something that is still being evaluated, studied, but we are in that process,” says Kleber Leite Filho. “SAF comes to bring investment to football, but obviously it has to go through the board, there is still a whole process,” completes Alexandre Beck.
With or without this change, the goal of the two is to see Serrano again in the Rio first division. Klebinho also plans to take the club to Série D and, later, C del Brasileirão. The assessment is that this is the best way to make the partnership generate profit for both parties in addition to selling the players’ rights. “For now it’s just an investment,” admits Klebinho.
GARRINCHA
Serrano was the first club to register the ace Garrincha – at least, as far as we know. A few years ago, while organizing the warehouse and trophy room at the gym, one of the club’s executives came across a framed card. “He looked at me and said: ‘it must be someone important, because they made a comic’. When I looked at the name and the photo, I saw that it was Garrincha!”, Alexandre Beck recalls.
The file is dated April 17, 1951, when Garrincha was 17 years old. It served to confirm that the player had been signed by Serrano to play in the local championship.
Having Garrincha among the names with which to dress the shirt is, without a doubt, one of Serrano’s greatest prides. Another was that the team managed to lock down Flamengo de Zico’s fourth state championship in 1980. The Rossoneri team went to Petrópolis that year and needed a simple draw to secure the title. It rained a lot that day.
“The pitch was flooded and our president proposed not to play. Márcio Braga (Flamengo president at the time) looked at him and said ‘no, let’s play, it will be a historic defeat’. They lost the match and the title. Then they knocked everything down , the crowd went all over town,” recalled Gilberto Cardoso, 66, who considers himself one of Serrano’s biggest fans. “There were 20,000 people. It was the biggest game in Serrano history. There were people perched on the floodlight towers too, I watched from the hill.”
Source: Terra
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