On Monday afternoon, a meeting took place at the Paraibana Football Federation (FPF) headquarters in a bid to determine dates and formats for the 2021 Paraibano competition. However, it all took a completely different turn. All clubs that were supposed to participate in the next edition of the competition took a joint stance and agreed to cancel the tournament for next year. The reason being that the financial implications of participating in the tournament are on the extreme and pending royalties exist as well.
The joint-decision was taken by representatives of seven out of the eight clubs that were to partake in the 2021 Paraibano Championship.
Directors of São Paulo Crystal, Campinense, Nacional de Patos, Atlético-PB, Perilimam, Treze and Sousa were all in support of the decision to cancel the competition for next year. The only exception was Botafogo-PB who had lcedo Gomes and Francisco Salles as representatives but only as listeners and nothing more.
The main complaint coming from clubs is about the pending amounts of cash still yet to be paid from the old Gol de Placa program alongside the Sports incentive Program which was introduced in January this year.
As seen in the minutes taken down in the meeting, clubs also made a request that the president of the FPF, Michelle Ramalho should help interfere and make contact with figure heads of the state government in a bid to solve the problems mentioned above. The same minutes of the meeting hinted there was no likelihood of payment at the moment and hence the final decision was that the Paraibano Championship for 2021 would be cancelled.
