-Sorocaba Club athletes cheering after determining their victory in the first division leagues in Sao Paulo last year. Photo: Sorocaba Club

Heung Tae Kim (64), owner of the Clube Atlético Sorocaba, a professional soccer team based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was looking forward to good news around mid-March. “The news has finally been put up on the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) website,” Kim said.

The good news he had been awaiting was the Algerian national team’s decision to use the Sorocaba Club lodging and training facilities during the upcoming Brazil World Cup. After a long competition with about 800 other Brazilian pro clubs to attract the 31 foreign national teams that had qualified for the World Cup to their facilities, their efforts finally paid off.

Sorocaba Club owner Kim spoke with us on April 18th at the Sorocaba Club office in Sao Paulo. “I took over the Sorocaba Club in 2000. We’ve had pretty good results until now, but attracting the Algerian team is a venture that can catapult us onto the next level,” said Kim. “There is certainly a notion that professional Brazilian soccer clubs need to attract international representative teams of this year’s World Cup in order to enter and grow within the international soccer market.”

Pro soccer club manager and owner Heung Tae Kim, who came from Korea to Brazil, the heart of world soccer, was originally a minister of the Unification Church. He was carrying out ministerial work in Uijeongbu in 2000 when he took over the Sorocaba Club at the urging of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and has been managing the club ever since.

At the time of the takeover, there was a lot of opposition, even from within the Unification Church, with many wondering why it was necessary to send people all the way to Brazil to manage a soccer club. However, Rev. Moon’s iron resolve overcame their complaints. “In order to bring about peace movements through soccer, we need to go to the Mecca of soccer.” 

At the time, the Unification Church took over the Sorocaba Club, which was a member of A Group, 3rd division league in Sao Paulo, for a mere 2 million dollar. After the takeover, the Sorocaba Club experienced a series of victories, which brought them through the 2nd division to the 1st division of A Group. And in 2008, they were victorious in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd division league championships. They surprisingly won a close game of 4 to 3 against Kinze Piracicaba, bringing home the championship cup.

The Club ended the 2013-2014 season in March with poor results as they dropped back down to the 2nd division league. However, bringing in the Algerian national team is a splendid achievement for the Club. “With our achievements until now, the Sorocaba Club’s value is tens of times more  than the original asking price at the time of takeover. Now the price is up to the seller,” said Club owner Kim. “We now intend to take the path back to becoming a noble club of the prestigious 1st division league.”

According to Kim, the professional soccer leagues of the 27 states of Brazil all operate in a similar fashion. Each state oversees its own league. The leagues are divided into A, B and C Groups, which are then divided again into 1st, 2nd and 3rd divisions. In Sao Paulo, which has a population of 4 billion people, the A Group alone consists of 60 different clubs. About 6,000 clubs throughout all of Brazil participate in the league games under this system. With an average of about 30 players per club, Brazil is packed with about 180,000 professional soccer players.

The competition between clubs is fierce, and moving up ranks is practically impossible. It takes about 20 years to move from B Group to A Group, and moving up from 3rd division to 2nddivision within a Group can take up to 7 years. Owner Kim explains how the Sorocaba Club was able to move up from 3rd to 1st division after the Unification Church takeover in just 3 short years…