Sfera U20

Sfera FC never fielded a first team for most of the 2025 season, and it did not need one to make headlines. In the opening match of the Paulista Sub-20 championship, a club with no senior side to speak of beat Santos 2-1, and by the middle of the following season it sat near the top of Group A.

The club began life in 2021, registered as a Sociedade Anônima do Futebol the following April under three founding partners, among them chief executive Gustavo Aranha and Fábio Francez. Between 2023 and 2024 they sold 40% of the company to roughly 30 families and investors for R$50 million, while keeping control in their own hands. Sfera does not build towards a place in Série A. The stated aim is to break even by 2028 through developing players and selling them on.

That business runs through partnerships with Basel, Midtjylland, Malmö and Deportivo La Coruña, who take players from Sfera's academy for modest transfer fees in exchange for the Brazilian club keeping a cut, between 20% and 50%, of any future sale to a bigger European side. Others have gone to New York Red Bulls, to clubs in Mexico and England, to Torreense in Portugal, and to Bahia, Coritiba and Ceará at home.

In 2025 the club's Sub-17 side won the Campeonato Paulista, beating Ibrachina in the final. Sfera plays under the nickname Raio Amado, in dark blue and sky blue, and its history with a home ground has been unsettled: matches were long staged at the Estádio Municipal Amadeu Mosca in Salto, holding up to 5,900, until the partnership with the local council there ended in September 2025 and the club moved its games to Santana de Parnaíba.

Aranha remains the figure most associated with the project, the executive who built a club around the idea that developing a footballer is worth more than fielding one.