‘Sandals of Humility’: São Paulo chief on Rafinha and club’s future | OneFootball

Rui Costa, São Paulo’s executive football director, gave a lengthy press conference on Wednesday afternoon (19th) at the Barra Funda training center, where he made some revelations about the club’s future and assessed the current season.

The Tricolor executive was asked whether the club needs to “put on the sandals of humility” to fix its finances, since São Paulo has accumulated almost R$1 billion in debt, and he also responded to speculation about the possible return of former full-back Rafinha to Morumbi.

See Rui Costa’s answers:

‘Sandals of Humility’ due to debts: “I will respectfully disagree. I believe São Paulo is a benchmark in many aspects, especially for our capacity. I have to go back to 2021, there’s no way around it. The ability we had to face these adversities is what made us become a reference again.”

“We became competitive again, won titles, faced teams with greater financial power than ours. Achieving financial balance is not a difficult task only at São Paulo, but at all clubs around the world. My role here is to adapt to the issues the club needs to address to reach this goal. Since I arrived, I was never told anything other than the reality of the club and how challenging it was.”

“I remember the first meeting we had at Morumbi. The president and Belmonte asked me: ‘Do you know how to run football without major investments?’ That’s what we face here every day. If perhaps we are not the most prominent, I am absolutely convinced that we have managed, in adversity, to become a reference in many aspects.”

Was the year frustrating? “The year was frustrating in the sense that we all believed the team we assembled could go further in competitions, but we have to be alert to the variables, which are very frequent. We lost many important players in the same positions. We tried to rebalance with transfer windows that close.”

“Today you don’t have such great availability. Obviously, the frustrations were due to not being in the final stages of competitions, for not having won a title. We are convinced that this is a base, a structure of concepts so that we do not become frustrated again.”

2026 Calendar: “We already had the FPF technical congress to talk about the Paulista. The president, Belmonte, and I were there. And there was already concern from all the clubs about the calendar, which will be new and have impacts we don’t yet know. You will have to focus a lot on the first transfer window, of approximately 58 days. We will have three windows. We will have many rounds of the Brasileiro between one window and another, which didn’t happen before.

“The second window, where you would already adapt the team, make some changes, loses importance, because we will have a very intense year starting in January. This year, we have to be very assertive in the first window. Also, regarding the use of young players. There were changes in the possibility of using more athletes, reducing the time frame for signing players who can be used.”

Sporting failure? “Sporting failure, no. I wouldn’t use that expression. I can say it was a bad year. A year in which we didn’t meet goals, as we did in other years. The sporting goals, mainly. And that’s what matters to the fans. The business is São Paulo’s football. And we didn’t have a year that we can say we can repeat to reach a level of excellence. We understand that the fans are frustrated. My superiors are São Paulo fans. And I became a São Paulo fan. We know the impact this has on the fans.”

“And we can’t meet these goals you mentioned. We want to win every year, but we have to look at the processes to make this a reality. I don’t use the word failure, because I’ve worked in sporting situations where the words tragedy and failure I use with great care. I can assure you that we have never faced failure here and I hope we never do.”

Rafinha’s return: “Your question is complex, because you bring up a fundamental figure for us here, which is Rafinha. He is loved by all of us. He was São Paulo’s captain. He contributed a lot. But let’s take Rafinha out of this context. He is Rafinha of São Paulo.

“Within our São Paulo structure, we have never considered, never talked about Rafinha, up to this moment. São Paulo’s football today is the president, Belmonte, Nelson, Muricy, and me as executive director. That’s what we have today. And I have no real information, without in any way diminishing this extraordinary person that is Rafinha, that allows me to tell you even minimally that he is being considered here. I can’t speak to you based on speculation or even your provocation, in a good sense, in your question. We have never discussed this here in any decisive way.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.