Pedro Daniel named Atlético CEO, targets efficiency and youth integration

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·10 de diciembre de 2025

Pedro Daniel named Atlético CEO, targets efficiency and youth integration

On the morning of Wednesday, December 10th, Atlético introduced its new CEO, Pedro Daniel, at the Press Room of Arena MRV. With nearly 20 years of experience in the football industry — much of it in consultancy — the executive has been directly involved in financial restructuring projects and strategic planning for Serie A clubs.

The ceremony was attended by shareholder Rafael Menin, who was responsible for officially bidding farewell and expressing gratitude for the services of Bruno Muzzi, the club's CEO from 2022 to 2025, and Victor Bagy, the former director of football.

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Pedro's arrival comes at one of the most financially delicate moments for the club. Consequently, he was asked about the similarities and differences between Atlético's situation and the processes he closely followed at Flamengo and Palmeiras. In his responses, the new CEO made sure to contextualize each case and project possible paths for Galo.

Pedro Daniel explains differences between the models of Flamengo, Palmeiras, and Atlético

The executive, who worked at Flamengo during the presidency of Eduardo Bandeira de Mello, began by explaining that the football environment in 2025 is completely different from that of a decade ago when the Rio club began its deep restructuring process.

I heard a lot when I was about to arrive here: “you're coming to do what you did at Flamengo.” The truth is that the market moment was different. The context was different, and Galo is different from Flamengo. At that time, there were no capital alternatives. The SAF Law didn't exist, nor did the environment we have today.

Pedro emphasized that if Flamengo had to start a similar restructuring today as in 2013, the approach would be very different:

If I were hired to go to Flamengo today, certainly the remedy would be different from what was done starting in 2013. There, it was an organic restructuring, without outside investment, without outside money. It was a very strong cost-cutting initially, 'closing the taps,' so that in the medium term, it could become competitive again with its revenues. We're talking about a project that started in 2013 and began seeking titles in 2019.

Immediate competitiveness and new financial scenario

The new CEO highlighted that today's football is driven by much higher figures, making it unfeasible to apply a reconstruction process based solely on austerity to Atlético, as happened with Flamengo 10 years ago.

Today the market moment is different. When we think of organic restructuring, we would lose a lot in competitiveness. The financial volume of football today is very different from what it was 10 years ago. So we don't have that margin for error, that space. And it's not what we want, to lose a lot of competitiveness, as we would start taking risks, given that today there are many competitors. For example, we have multinationals competing today, like the City Group, Red Bull. We can't lose ground, or the situation worsens.

Palmeiras as a reference for integration between youth and professional levels

Pedro Daniel also mentioned the case of Palmeiras, whose strategy he helped guide during his time at EY.

It's curious that at EY, I led the strategic planning for Palmeiras, and the 'recipe' was completely different. Regarding what Palmeiras is, we see by the level of competitiveness it has, the financial volume, it's much more about the restructuring of the youth system and integration with football. The value it raises from player sales allows it to compete with Flamengo today. It's not just recurring revenues.

When projecting paths for Atlético, Pedro showed a clear inclination towards this model:

I think we envision more of this for Atlético than what happened at Flamengo back in 2013. Here, our Football Department needs to be integrated with the youth system, understanding where we want to go. But it's a process.

The first changes within the management of the club's new CEO have started to appear. In recent days, 5 professionals who worked in Atlético's football department have left the club. They are Victor Bagy (Director of Football), Carlos Alberto Isidoro (Football Supervisor), Daniel Cerqueira (Technical Assistant), Éder Aleixo (Technical Assistant), and Gustavo Nicoline (Performance Analysis Coordinator).

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