The historic club from Rio will be back to Série B, and all due to a disgraceful second part of the season. Fogão’s poor finances and deep problems in their high structure eventually resulted in one of the worst series of games Série A has ever seen.
While not brilliant, Botafogo’s start of the season was nowhere near like the way the season ended. For a while, Fogão was king of draws, managing to battle with all teams in the league. Two consecutive wins (Palmeiras and Sport) in October showed promise.
However, that was the end of point for ‘Lone Star’ team. From then on, Botafogo entered in a spiral of lack of confidence and weak organization that led to a long sequence of terrible results: only 1 win from round 17 to round 36. Fogão got relegated in an almost record time.
The injury of key players like Gatito or Nazário, the lack of significant investment resulting in former reserves assuming a central role in the team, and the disappointing performance of big names Honda and Kalou were among the major reasons for the big failure.
Centre-halves duo Kanu and Marcelo, holding midfielder José Welison and the irregular but prolific strikers Pedro Raul and Matheus Babi were the least awful during the season. Bruno Nazário was usually good, but suffered from constant injuries.
The most worrying fact for the fans is to know that Botafogo may not immediately bounce back and resume top flight, so deep are their structural problems.
