São Paulo Crystal

Second division football in Paraíba is where São Paulo Crystal has spent most of its short life, and the 2019 title there sent the club up to the state's top flight after a run that had already shown once, in 2014 under a different name, that promotion was within reach. A step up to national competition followed in 2022, when the club took part in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série D and met América-RN, Retrô, Icasa, Sousa and Afogados da Ingazeira in Group A3; a 7-0 defeat to Afogados da Ingazeira summed up how that group stage went, and the campaign ended there.

The club as it exists now dates to 2017, when Múcio Carlos, a director at a local cachaça distillery called São Paulo Crystal, bought a small side named Lucena Sport Club and moved it from Lucena to Cruz do Espírito Santo. He renamed it after his own distillery, which itself borrowed its name from two clubs an ocean apart: São Paulo FC and Crystal Palace. The red, white and black kit comes from the Brazilian side; the eagle on the badge is drawn from Crystal Palace's crest of the 1980s. Supporters, styled "São Paulinos" in the club anthem, know the team by its nickname, Carcará, after the caracara bird that also serves as mascot.

Augusto Recife gave the project some weight it hadn't had before: a midfielder who had won the Tríplice Coroa with Cruzeiro in 2003, he turned out for São Paulo Crystal in 2021 and 2022, well past the point in his career where a second-division Paraíba side would normally see him. Matches at the Estádio Municipal O Carneirão draw crowds from a ground whose stated capacity shifts depending on who is counting. Beyond the fixtures against Atlético Cajazeirense, Sousa and CSP, a first appearance in a national competition where the club could hold its own rather than concede seven has yet to come.