Ceará announces renewals for 2026 in series B

After falling in the Brazilian Serie A Championship in 2025, Ceará has already started thinking about next year, and before thinking about the players, the club has returned to important planning elements. The first renewals concern Haroldo Martins, CEO of Football, Lucas Drubscky, Director of Football, and João Paulo Sanches, Technical Coordinator.

Concerning the players, the reformulation of the squad will be 60%, according to the president of Ceará, João Paulo Silva, in an interview given to a Ceará program. João knows that the club will have to reduce salaries and reformulate the team with “high level” players.

The technical office trio even finds itself relegated. In 2024, they won the State Championship and reached the elite of Brazilian football. In 2025, they were double champions of Ceará, but ended up being relegated again in just one year to Serie A.

In the squad, at least four players have permanent renewals that are very difficult to achieve due to high salaries: Galeano, Fabiano, Matheus Bahia and Lucas Mugni. In the interview given to the program Jogada 3º tempo, the president spoke about these situations.

– There are players that the club would buy if they had continued in Serie A, like Galeano and Fabiano, we had the opportunity to buy. Unfortunately, with fall, this will no longer be possible. Matheus Bahia was part of our plans for a possible purchase of economic rights. It is therefore natural that certain players who were in our schedule for 2026, now relegated, are not possible. So we will have to look for other options. We already have some names mapped out, even sketching out this Serie B scenario, that we will have to look for – said João Paulo Sanches.