Football Season Review

№20: Parana Clube

Depressing; absolutely depressing. Paraná was way below the level that top flight requires, and their relegation was predictable long before it became official. Paraná could only grab four victories, the last one of which came when the team was already confirmed to be relegated. Paraná broke the record of more consecutive matches without winning, and broke it quite comfortably. The previous record was 15 winless games; Paraná got 18, this season. And only 5 of those 18 games were ties; all the rest was simple defeats. And there were more negative records broken: Paraná scored only 18 goals, which was the worst any team has ever scored in round-robin modern day format of Série A (since 2003). In the previous 14 editions, the worst attacking performance had been of Naútico, in 2013, scoring 22 goals, four more than Paraná did this year. Despite the poor start, coach Rogério Micale was given a unusual long time ahead of a team that couldn’t stop losing. Micale was finally sacked just before the end of the first turn, when Paraná was already on the bottom of the table. The next man in line was Claudinei Oliveira, who managed to do even worse than Micale, who at least managed to get three victories. Claudinei could only get three points (three draws) in the 11 games he was in charge. Claudinei then left the club to go try to save Chapecoense from relegation, since it was impossible to do it at Paraná. Dado Cavalcanti arrived at the club with only one motivation: to build a solid group of young players that could form the base of the team for the next season. Goalkeeper Richard was perhaps the only player who could be said to have had a positive season. After losing his spot on the first team for some weeks to Thiago Rodrigues, Richard came back in the beginning of August and had a few nice performances that may have called the attention of a couple of bigger clubs. After Neris left the club to join Portuguese football in June, the defence was left no serious reference. Despite not having been an absolute first choice, the 18-years old Jhonny Lucas caught the attention by showing already a big potential that earned him a call to Brazil U20 national team, already.


Player of the Season: Richard de Oliveira Costa