São Paulo – The name can be confusing. Is Sharjah Brasil Football Club from Brazil or the United Arab Emirates, where the emirate of Sharjah is located? Sharjah Brasil FC is a Brazilian team, but there is a reason for its Arabic name. It is with this emirate the club from the municipality of Alumínio, in the interior of São Paulo state, has agreements and many cooperation and business plans. Pictured above, a player from the Brazilian team on the field (white and red jersey).
Founded in 2004, Sharjah Brasil FC, previously named Associação Atlética Cubatense, signed two agreements with the Arab club Sharjah FC. There were three meetings between its directors, two of them informally. The first occurred in 2019, and the latest in 2022 after the Brazilian team had already changed its name. Even if strange, it is possible for two teams to use the same name.
“It’s okay to have the same name as another football team because they are different entities. For example, the São Paulo FC team is distinct from the city and state of São Paulo. Atlético Mineiro here in Brazil is different from Atlético de Madrid. And Atlético de Madrid did not need to authorize Atlético Mineiro to use the same name because they are different markets,” explained Marcelo Neres, president of Sharjah Brasil FC.
Among the agreements signed at the last meeting, a partnership was established so in the future, when Sharjah Brasil FC starts to bring forward breakthrough under-20 players, the Arab team will have a preference to buy them.
“Because of the mix of people, we have different athletes. So we discussed in the UAE to instead of waiting for Brazilian athletes to leave, go play in Europe, and then be traded to the Arab market four times more expensive, to take them directly from Brazil, so the purchase is made with more reasonable market values,” added Neres.
In addition to this exchange of players, there is also a project between the two teams, the construction of a stadium. Sharjah Brasil FC would be responsible for delivering the land, which has already been pre-defined, and Sharjah FC would build the space. After the name change, in 2022, a tour of the Brazilian players to the UAE was scheduled to play in friendlies with local teams, including Sharjah FC. The event, expected to occur in mid-2023, could also strengthen the relationship between the Brazilian and Arab technical committees.
A grandson to Lebanese as club president
Despite being in the world of football for a long time, Marcelo Neres, 56, from São Paulo, originally came from the publishing market. In the 2000s, Neres established his own publishing house, Marketing Books, and started investing in purchasing copyrights for North American bestsellers, translating them into Portuguese, and distributing them in Brazil and Portugal.
After a few years, he had his first contact with football when he published the official São Paulo Football Federation magazine; ‘Futebol Paulista.’ The magazine lasted three years, from 2004 to 2007. The following year, the publisher’s owner decided to dive into the football market by becoming president of Associação Atlética Cubatense.
Grandson to Lebanese, the journalist carried business at the publishing house and the football club when he made his first commercial transaction with Arabs in 2018, during the Book Biennial in São Paulo. While exhibiting with his publishing house, Neres developed a relationship with the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA). The entity from the emirate, which operates in the publishing market, invited him to meet and prospect business at the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF), a book show in the region.
After the show, a partnership was signed between the publishing house in São Paulo to translate books from Arabic into Portuguese and Emirati government entities for works in Portuguese to be translated into Arabic. For two years, the business went well until the pandemic hit and brought operations to a standstill.
Sharjah: From books to football
In addition to the commercial aspect, the visit to Sharjah, one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, inspired the journalist. Acting as an investor and president of Associação Atlética Cubatense since 2008, Neres enjoyed the region so much that he had the idea of, at the same time, changing the name of the team and paying homage to the emirate.
Consequently, in January 2022, when the team formalized itself as a football club company and moved from Cubatão to the city of Alumínio, located in the Metropolitan Region of Sorocaba, it changed its name to Sharjah Brasil FC. To make this adjustment, the president of the Brazilian team received authorization from the emirate’s authorities.
Sharjah Brasil FC
In 2023, Sharjah Brasil FC made history by competing for the first time in the São Paulo Junior Cup. Currently, the Brazilian team, which qualified to compete in the second phase of the competition, has under-11, under-13, under-15, under-17, and under-20 teams, and a total of 150 to 200 athletes, with 15 technical staff members.
Prospectively, following an invitation from the SBA, Neres could open a Marketing Books headquarters in the UAE to distribute books worldwide. “Later this semester, I will return to Sharjah to discuss this matter.”
Furthermore, the consul general of the UAE in São Paulo, Abdalla Shaheen, who took up the post late last year, promised to visit the team soon to check out the facilities.
Special report by Rebecca Vettore for ANBA.
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
