Furacão ended the season in a “normal” 8th position, but it was a very odd season where Athlético spent a few weeks in the bottom places of the table. Paulo Autuori saved the season, picking up the team in their lowest moment of the past few years and bringing them to their rightful place in the top half of the table.
Two wins in the first two rounds seemed to announce another successful season for ‘curitibenhos’. However, Furacão picked only two more wins in the first half of the season, amidst two horrible series of negative results (6 defeats and 3 draws from round 3 to 9; 5 defeats and 2 draws from round 13 to 19).
By this time, Athlético had sacked two managers already. The club’s general manager Paulo Autuori had to step in and coach the team until the end of the season. And the results were impressive.
The experienced manager shortened the squad, setting a few players aside (Geuvânio, Ravanelli, Jorginho…) and fixed a solid structure despite some physical problems still affecting the team. Besides some weeks with simultaneous Covid infection, Nikão, Heleno and Erick had some injuries that hurt the team in important rounds.
The adding of Renato Kayzer proved to be essential as Bissoli and the other strikers were not doing the job. Aderbar Santos was, as usual, a points-grabber with several game-winning saves: 10 clean sheets in the second half of the season. Cittadini, as well as Heleno and Nikão, were still important despite injuries; Christian was the revelation, in midfield.
Nonetheless, despite the recovery, the club should be quick to admit that they are very far from the quality of previous seasons, where Lodi, Bruno Guimarães and Leo Pereira were driving the club to important titles.
