Brusque

Brusque spent the whole of 2003 without a team. The clubs it had been built from twelve years earlier reclaimed the stadiums through the courts, and Brusque simply had nowhere to play a season. It came back afterwards, kept the name, and eventually became a notable side in the region.

The club was formed on 12 October 1987, when Clube Atlético Carlos Renaux and Clube Esportivo Paysandu merged into one side for the city of Brusque, in Santa Catarina. Its first taste of national football came the following year, in Série C. The breakthrough was 1992: the state championship and the Copa Santa Catarina both went to Brusque in the same season, with forward Cláudio Freitas scoring the winning goal in the final.

Nothing on the national stage matched what happened in 2019. Brusque won the Campeonato Brasileiro Série D, the fourth tier, and with it a place in Série B. Goalkeeper Jesus Carlos saved a decisive penalty along the way, and Júnior Pirambu finished as the competition's top scorer. It remains the club's biggest result outside Santa Catarina, and the run continued into 2023 with a runner-up finish in Série C.

Locally, the rival is Criciúma, a fixture treated as the derby, though Criciúma holds the upper hand: 32 wins to 19 as of early 2025, including both state-championship finals in 2023 and 2024. Chapecoense provides the other edge, with matches that have at times spilled into trouble among supporters. Among current players, goalkeeper Matheus Nogueira has become the closest thing the club has to a symbol, past 150 appearances in goal.

Home games are played at Estádio Augusto Bauer, and where the story keeps circling back to the year the team had no ground to call its own.