2016 brought Sport Recife crashing back down to earth after their stellar 2015 campaign. With last year’s 6th-placed finish, Sport enjoyed their best ever ranking under the current league format, but they spent 2016 battling relegation and they entered the final day of the season still unsure of their Serie A status. A win on the final day, coupled with Internacional’s failure to take the three points, meant that they survived to play Serie A football again next season, but it wasn’t an enjoyable year for supporters at the Estadio Adelmar da Costa Carvalho. The extremely experienced Oswaldo de Oliveira was the man tasked with leading Sport into the 2016 season, but it was always going to be tough given the limited resources at his disposal. The team suffered three defeats in their opening four matches, drawing the other, with just one goal scored in the process. That poor run saw expectations for the season drastically revised and climbing out of the relegation zone became the immediate goal. For the first 15 weeks of the season the team was rooted to the bottom five, but they eventually reached as high as 11th after three consecutive wins over Gremio, Cruzeiro and Atletico Paranaense, with the Recife club’s patience with Oswaldo de Oliveira paying off. By the 30th weekend, though, the team was back on the edge of the relegation zone and their prospects looked even bleaker when Oswaldo de Oliveira departed for the Corinthians job. 34-year-old assistant Daniel Paulista was given the job until the end of the season and had the unenviable task of avoiding relegation, which he impressively managed to do. He kept their 4-2-3-1 shape, but shifted converted left-back Rodney Wallace back further forward to provide a more potent attacking base and started Rogerio at centre-forward, for which he was rewarded with four Rogerio goals in the team’s final six matches, which essentially kept them up.
Rogerio, therefore, was one of the team’s stars, scoring eight goals in total, but the real hero of this team was once again attacking midfielder Diego Souza. He was the league’s joint top scorer with his 14 goals and he wasn’t even a centre-forward. At 31 years of age he showed that he still has plenty of talent left in the tank and it proved sufficient to save Sport from a relegation to Serie B. Defensively, Sport were generally poor in 2016, but Rene and Matheus Ferraz did play some good stuff at times and kept enough of a defensive line for Sport to survive. Rithely, meanwhile, was excellent in defensive midfield and it often didn’t matter whether he played alongside Neto Moura, Paulo Roberto or Ronaldo Henrique as his reassuring presence would guide them through.
With a presidential election coming up, Sport Recife has not yet confirmed whether or not Daniel Paulista will be kept on as coach for 2017 as that will be the decision of the new administration. Yet a number of players have spoken out in support of the rookie manager and his record of four wins out of a possible eight should make him a strong candidate to keep the job. If he does then Sport will look to build on what he started, aiming for a more comfortable midtable finish next season.
