Larissa Riquelme, Refereeing Scandal, Santos Woman’s Team Status

Larissa Riquelme will present/model América-PE’s new uniforms for the 2012 season. The news is a bit random (América-PE is completely unknown in Brazil). The club hopes that Larissa’s presence will bring much needed attention to the club and generate money to restructure its youth division and build a new training center. Lofty goals to say the least. As for Larissa, times are probably tough when you have to model for América-PE.

On to more serious news, Gutemberg de Paula (a Brazilian referee) has accused CONAF (Brazil’s National Referee Commission) of corruption. The ref is accusing the organization and its president, Sérgio Côrrea, of favoring certain clubs. Gutemberg says refs were required to call Côrrea before matches. Before refereeing Corinthians 5-1 win over Goiás, Côrrea supposedly told Gutemberg “go, good luck. You’ll be refereeing Timão’s (Corinthian’s nickname) game, huh?” Gutemberg says he interpreted this as an order to help Corinthians win or risk not being chosen to ref again. Although Gutemberg claims to have proof, the fact that his allegations only came after he was not nominated to be a FIFA official raises questions about the validity/motives of his accusations. Nevertheless I’d still be in favor of an investigation…wouldn’t be the first time corruption occurred in Brazil football.

Continuing the stream of bad news, Santos’ women team was disbanded last week by club president. The club was one of the few bright spots in a country which offers absolutely no support for women footballers (Brazil still does not have the woman’s national championship it promised years ago). Santos, which spends millions monthly to pay Neymar’s salary, says the R$ 1.5 million annual budget for the woman’s team was too much! Well one company has offered to pay a third of that sum in sponsorship. Hopefully this does workout and the team does return, it would be a shame to lose them. Hopefully other teams follow suit as well.

Category: CBF