After just surviving for two years in a row, Vitória succumbed on 2018 after an appalling season. The most relevant fact must have been the poor defending: Vitória was the worst defence in Série A, this season, conceding 63 goals (an average of 1.66 goals conceded per match). Vitória used no less than 46 players in the season, a number that was only second to Paraná, which started to use several young players in the final rounds. From those 46, 7 were centre-halves, 6 were left-backs and 4 were right-backs. The team rotated four goalkeepers. All in just 38 rounds. No wonder Vitória got such negative numbers in defence.
Coach Vágner Mancini, responsible for the two salvation seasons in previous editions, was only able to last for 16 rounds. A bad 0-4 defeat in late July was the final stroke for Vágner who got provisionally replaced by João Burse, and then arrived PC Carpegianni, who conducted Vitória for their best moment in the season. After two expected defeats against title contenders, Carpegianni grabbed a good run of three wins and one goalless away draw; more remarkable, a sequence of four consecutive clean sheets. It was good, but it was short. The worst moment in league was just about to come, and quickly Vitória got back to relegation places. Baianos only grabbed a single win in the last 14 rounds. In the meantime, João Burse was called again to replace the eventually sacked Carpegianni.
Those four consecutive clean sheets appeared right when a new kid was brought to the first team. Despite the abundance of experienced centre-halves available, Carpegianni saw the talent of Lucas Ribeiro and got him on the first team. His absolute senior debut was during the 0-1 defeat to Flamengo. After that, Lucas Ribeiro helped Vitória into getting that remarkable an sequence of defensive prowess. Unfortunately, there weren’t many other good individual performances among the 46 used players. Vitória sgned a total of 27 new players in 2018, but the highlights were already hidden in the youth teams. Just like Lucas Ribeiro, Leo Gomes was brought from U23 team in the end of August, and was a solid piece of Vitória’s midfield ever since. Leo Ceará returned from loan also in August and became the club’s second best scorer with five goals. After an impressive State Championship form, Neilton had a more than decent first half of league season, but his form after August was depressing, having been dropped to a mere bench condition for the last couple of months.
