The Brazilian football club Íbis Sport hadn’t won a match for two years.
But now the self-styled “worst team in the world”, which plays in the lowest division of the Pernambuco state championship, has three consecutive victories – and can make it a record-breaking four if they can beat Centro Limoeirense this Sunday.
But far from welcoming this sudden reversal of fortune , some fans claim the club’s roots and identity are at stake.
Following the latest 1-0 victory against Ferroviário do Cabo, fans stormed a local bar where the players were enjoying a post-match barbecue and beers to demand: please stop winning.
“This is destroying our history,” said one protest leader, Nilsinho Filho.
Other fans went on social media to complain, or call for resignations. “This is a worrying situation in the long term. To stop being an icon and to be just another winning team. It’s the coach’s fault,” read a typical tweet.
Between 1980 and 1984, the team went three years and 11 months without winning a game, and entered the Guinness Book of Records as “the worst club in the world”.
The club’s Maradona-permed former midfielder Mauro Shampoo, boasts that he scored just one goal in 10 years, and has also criticised the recent victories.“If we keep winning, we are going to lose our brand,” he said.
The club’s president, Ozir Junior, insisted that the club’s ambition is to get to the first division of the state championship.
He attributed the string of sudden victories to several new players who had joined the team after recently becoming unemployed. “We are not the worst team in the world – that was a thing of the 1980s. We’re not even the worst team in Pernambuco,” he said. “The first division is our dream, but it’s going to be a lot of work.”
Nilsinho Filho claimed that even if the club is promoted, Íbis Sport has already claimed its place in history.
“Even if we go on to win the Brazilian championship one day, no one will ever be able to take our title as the worst team in the world,” he said.