Brazilian Campeonato Potiguar

About Brazilian Campeonato Potiguar

The Campeonato Potiguar de Futebol (Potiguar Football Championship) is a competition organized since 1918 by the Liga de Desportos Terrestres do Rio Grande do Norte (which successively transformed into the Associação Riograndense de Atletismo, Federação Norteriograndense de Desportos, and finally, the Federação Norte-rio-grandense de Futebol) to determine the state champion among the football clubs of this state.

The 1918 Potiguar Championship was not completed due to the Spanish flu. Only one game remained to finish the competition. At that time, Centro Esportivo Natalense was in the lead.

The 1942 championship was cancelled. Atlético, supported by Alecrim, América, Força e Luz and Santa Cruz, filed a request to disaffiliate Paysandu, an action that triggered an unprecedented crisis in the Rio Grande do Norte Sports Federation, culminating in the suspension of games and the eventual abandonment of the 1942 championship.

In retaliation for this move by the other clubs, some ABC athletes – including its director Vicente Farache and some players – sabotaged the preparation of the Rio Grande do Norte state team, which was easily defeated in the Brazilian Championship by the Paraíba state team in the first round.

On October 12th, in the final stages of resolving the crisis, the General Council of the FND met and suspended Paysandu for 3 years, and on October 19th, a military man from São Paulo, Captain José Porfírio da Paz, a historical figure of São Paulo Futebol Clube, who was serving in Natal at that time, was elected president of the Federation. Finally, on February 12th, 1943, an act of the FND presidency annulled all matches and canceled the 1942 tournament.

Up until the year 2000, the competition had only had five champions, all from the capital city of Natal: ABC, Alecrim, América, Centro Esportivo, Santa Cruz Esporte and Cultura.

From 2001 onwards, there was a strengthening of teams from the interior of the state, which won six titles in twenty-one years: Corintians de Caicó won in 2001; Potiguar de Mossoró was champion in 2004 and 2013; Baraúnas, from the same city, was champion in 2006; ASSU was champion in 2009; and Globo, from Ceará-Mirim, was crowned champion in 2021.

The team that has won the Campeonato Potiguar the most times is ABC, with 57* titles, holding the world record for titles in a single competition and being the most successful state champion in Brazil.

The titles disputed by both sides are those of 1920, 1921, 1923, 1924/25 (a back-to-back title that would belong to Alecrim FC), and 1928/29. The oldest researcher from Natal, the meticulous Luiz GM Bezerra, has always cited, whenever he returns to this subject, the arguments that the board of the North Rio Grande League raised to justify the postponement of some matches, and sometimes their cancellation. Among the reasons cited were the League's need to improve the state of the playing field (the Juvenal Lamartine stadium did not yet exist), and other times – and this is a justifiable cause – the outbreak of a flu called "Spanish Influenza," which caused several fatalities throughout Brazil, as is happening today with dengue fever. A curious fact about the old championships played in Natal is that the season was never completed in the same year, with cases even of championships that only finished in May of the following year. Besides the lack of lighting for night games, the lack of other venues for matches made the competition monotonous and lengthy, with one or two games per week, when Saturdays were used.