São Caetano

São Caetano do Sul sits in the industrial belt on the southern edge of São Paulo. In December 1989 a group set out to put one back on the map, registering the new club under the name of an old amateur outfit before changing it shortly afterwards. Blue and snow white came from the municipal flag, and the nickname followed the shirt: Azulão, the Big Blue.

The climb took a decade. Série C in 1998, then the Série A2 title in 2000, then the Copa João Havelange, where the club topped the Yellow group in the tournament that stood in for the Brazilian championship that season. The peak came in 2004, when São Caetano won the Campeonato Paulista — a state title in the same competition as Corinthians, Palmeiras, Santos and São Paulo, taken by a club from a town of car factories with a ground that holds fewer than 17,000.

That ground is the Anacleto Campanella, municipal property, once named after Lauro Gomes de Almeida. Its capacity is 16,744, which was the whole point of the story in 2004 and remains the first thing anyone mentions about it.

Grafite came through in those years, and Mário Fernandes came out of the academy before making his career elsewhere.

The finances turned. In 2022 the club was put up for auction, and players' strikes cost it matches by walkover. It now plays in the Copa Paulista, which it won in 2019, and in Paulista A4 — the fourth tier of the state game. In 2023 the legal entity was renamed São Caetano Futebol Ltda.

Between the Série A2 titles of 2000 and 2020 lie 20 years, and the club finished at roughly the level it started.