President defines the potential of Santa Cruz’s SAF: “Commercially speaking, the best in Brazil” | Holy Cross

The plans have already been made public: Santa Cruz wants to close its SAF in 2024 and is joining efforts to complete it in the second half of the year. This speed and desire from the board, especially from president Bruno Rodrigues, is primarily explained by the club’s need, with no national calendar this year. But not only.

Because, commercially speaking, as the tricolor president summarized, the coral team has a message to give to the market: “Investing in Santa Cruz is the best SAF in Brazil.”

– I say to the market as a whole that commercially speaking, business speaking, investing in Santa Cruz is the best SAF in Brazil. I talk to all of them and to all those interested I say this – says Bruno Rodrigues.

Looking for interested parties to invest in their football, Santa Cruz management has already toured states such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.

The contacts at the moment are with national and not foreign investors, as there has been demand for months and, due to the political instability caused by the election of the executive, the negotiation that was well underway has cooled down.

However, a few months after the election, the business method proposed by Santa Cruz remains unchanged: preserving its heritage and, therefore, not involving the Arruda stadium and the corporate headquarters in the future SAF to be established.

– We have talked a lot and received several investors from here in the state and outside of it. We have already had it in Rio, São Paulo and Brasília. We start from the principle of the model, and our model is to separate the SAF assets, the social area and the stadium. This is our expectation. Very calmly and calmly, we will confirm our SAF later this year – says the president.

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The first group of investors to show interest and almost come close to formalizing a proposal was the Azuriz Jay fund, of which Marcelo, a Real Madrid star and now at Fluminense, is one of the owners. There, there was a holding company behind it – a business model whose company owns others -, contributing money to the coffers of the club with the same name, Azuriz.

The representatives of the team from Paraná at the time, in March 2022, even visited the facilities of the Arruda stadium and CT Ninho das Cobras, also watching a Santa Cruz game alongside then-president Antônio Luiz Neto.

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The conversations were advanced, including support from Paulo Assis, now a partner at PlayMakers Sports Business, a company specializing in SAF implementation, and who had been a former superintendent of América-MG and CEO of Cruzeiro.