The streets of Camaragibe were awash with blue and yellow ticker tape and Caipirinha as supporters of Retrô Futebol Clube Brasil celebrated their young stars unexpectedly becoming Champions of Brazil. Just 17 years on from the club being founded, they’d risen through the ranks and claimed a maiden Série A title beyond the final day of the 2033 season.
Manager Robinho Lazaró was in the thick of the celebrations as the team was treated to a open top bus tour before joining their adoring fans on the city streets. However, in a ridiculous set of circumstances, his plans were hit by a severe lack of loyalty.
striker Diego Ruiz decided he wanted to “move to a bigger club to progress his career.” He requested a transfer, so Lazaró offered him out to other clubs, chucked him in the under 20 squad and renamed him Scumbag Ruiz and, with 12 months on his contract, he amusingly joined Botafogo, who finished 10th last season and have a worse club reputation, for £10m. A week later, Marcelo Martínez, who spent most of last season injured and delivered very little in addition to breaching the code of conduct 4 times, did exactly the same thing, got the same treatment and was farmed out on loan to Coritiba. They also sold on several youngsters that weren’t going to make it, bringing in around £2m for Bruno, Paulo Gustavo and Eduardo.
Better news was that the sales left the club with a huge £71.6m in the bank, with a transfer budget of £27.9m and £325k spare in a £465k wage budget. Massively improving winger Howar Menjura had a bit more loyalty and signed a new 5-year deal, along with the versatile Joílson and Ricardo and centre backs Roberto Cuero and Nicolás Pino. Lazaró put his recently acquired world scouting to use to bring in Algerian winger Mourad Chaoui, and promoted full back Carlos Eduardo and centre backs Guaraná and Igor Medaglia. Lazaró scouted around for striker replacements and had an opportunity resign former hero Rodrigo Godinho, now 23, for a massive £18m on £85k a week, but chose to stay true to his roots and put his faith in youth.
As a result, Alex is thrown into the limelight by stepping up to fill Scumbag’s boots at the age of 17 and 2 months with competition from the rapid Matheus de Oliveira. Ricardo slots into the attacking midfield role with Menjura and last season’s Série A Player of the Year Ricardo Cavalcante patrolling the wings. Joílson drops back to support the defensive midfield stalwarts André and Advaldo with Sergio Carrizo and Marcos Rabelo the starting full backs outside Roberto Cuero and Nicolás Pino.
Retrô’s Maiden Série A Defence
Alex made a goalscoring start as Retrô won their Pernambuco State opener 2-0 against Central, before de Oliveira bagged a hat trick in a 6-0 thumping of Náutico. The state championship was navigated undefeated before thrashing Afogados 7-0 on aggregate and defeating Náutico 3-2 on aggregate to lift a 3rd successive title – going 37 games unbeaten in the tournament in the process. And the newly monikered wonderkid Menjura won both the Best Player and Young Player of the Year awards, after 4 goals, 6 assists and a 7.86 rating in 9 games.
The bookies certainly weren’t backing Retrô to defend their maiden title, predicting them to finish 14th with odds of 50/1. Palmeiras are 6/5 favourites, followed by Flamengo (3/1), Santos (18/1), Gremio (20/1) and Botafogo, Corinthians, Bahia and Vasco da Gama (25/1).
The title defence began with centre back Wesley Martins scoring the only goal late on at home to Cuiabá. Alex scored in a creditable 2-2 at home to Palmeiras, before a dire 0-0 at Vasco as captain Advaldo made his long-awaited return off the bench after 9 months out with an ACL injury was followed by a disappointing 2-1 loss at Vitória. The shaky start continued with just 1 win from the opening 7 games, including getting thumped 4-1 at Flamengo. A Cavalcante brace got them back on track in a 4-2 win over Bahia, before de Oliveira scored twice to earn a thrilling 3-3 at Corinthians and Cavalcante, Menjura and Pino showed Ruiz what he was missing in a 3-0 victory over Botafogo.
The inconsistent form continued and, halfway through the season, any hopes of retaining their maiden title were long gone, trailing leaders Palmeiras by 17 points. But their form picked up through July and August, which saw them recover into the top 5, before a humbling 4-2 loss at home to Flamengo. The biggest problem was the lack of goals from strikers, as Alex and de Oliveira had scored a combined 8 goals in 47 league games. But they were being bailed out by the midfield, until de Oliveira found his shooting boots to score in 3 successive games in September.
That pickup in form left Retrô in 5th place with 6 games remaining, still 17 points behind leaders Bahia and 9 points clear of Coritiba in the Sudamericana places. So there was very little to play for at the end of the season, but a strong conclusion saw them rise up to 4th, finishing on 71 points with 20 wins, 11 draws and 7 defeats, scoring 64 anc conceding a league-low 40. At the top, Bahia thankfully held on to deny Flamengo on the final day.
Impressively, Cavalcante defended his Player of the Year award with a 7.43 rating in 31 games, in which he scored 12 and assisted 6. Menjura led the assists chart with 14 and, as a result, also Young Player of the Year and Best Foreign Player, while André was midfielder of the year and Carrizo was left back of the year.
Second Copa Libertadores Campaign
Last season’s runners-up Retrô got a friendly Copa Libertadores group alongside Libertad of Paraguay, Nacional of Uruguay and Universidad Católica of Chile. They began with Menjura inspiring a 4-1 win at home to Nacional before Cuero and Ricardo’s early goals edged a 2-1 win in Paraguay. Cavalcante scored the only goal in Chile and Ricardo and Joílson strikes secured a 2-0 win in the return game, which secured qualification with 2 games remaining. Rotated sides lost 2-1 at Nacional and beat Libertad 2-0 with Alex scoring the opener to top the group.
Another Chilean opponent followed in the second round as they took on Universidad de Chile. A 0-0 bore draw in Chile was followed by Ricardo and Cuero sneaking a 2-1 win at home. But an injury-hit team could only draw 1-1 at home to Gremio, then got thumped 4-0 away to exit in the quarter finals.
A Solid But Unspectacular Title Defence
Lazaró was relatively pleased with how his side performed this season, especially in light of losing two of their best players. de Oliveira’s end of season form saw him finish as top scorer with 17 in 57 (which doesn’t sound great!), followed by Cavalcante (16), Ricardo (15) and Menjura (12). But the latter was very much the star of the season with a new club record 23 assists, surpassing Cavalcante’s 20 in 2032, followed by André (13), Ricardo (11) and an usually low 6 for Cavalcante alongside Carrizo.
Menjura’s progress, which had seen him develop into a genuinely world class talent, was recognised as he became the first Retrô player to win the FIFA Best U21 Men’s Player – ahead of Scumbag Ruiz, which delighted Lazaró no end. However, they had a first underwhelming youth intake in a while, “only” delivering 4 top talents. However, de Oliveira had improved from a 1.5* to 3.5* player in 12 months, easily surpassing Alex as the best young attacking prospect at the club, which gave Lazaró plenty of hope for the future. While the impressive Menjura leads the way in the latest Ginga rating chart at 79, followed by Chaoui on 75.
The question remained whether Lazaró could keep this group together heading into 2035 or, as seemed far more likely, the likes of Menjura would believe they’d outgrown the club. But could Retrô improve to challenge for a second Brazilian title and go further in Copa Libertadores? Join us next Monday to find out!
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