My spirited public comments of November 1, 2023, regarding the 'corruption of results, which destroyed the Integrity of the 2023 Brazilian Championship, were not inspired SOLELY by the erroneous Red Card decision, of that evening, which reversed the likely outcome of a clear win for Botafogo.  

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UPDATE: It should be noted to outside observers that all governing bodies (including the STJD and the Senate CPI

Panel) have ruled convincingly that the Red Card that most impacted the 2023 Brasileirao was clearly invalid, should not have

been issued, and is likely the result of wrongful manipulation (or omission) of film clips by the presiding VAR official.

On June 6, 2023, the Senate CPI Panel announced that the matter is a serious scandal and will be formally investigated. 

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As I have now made clear publicly, my concerns regarding the likelihood of match-fixing actually began on August 27, 2023, while watching a Vasco-Palmeiras game, which invalidated a Vasco goal and wrongfully awarded a clean 3-point benefit to Palmeiras.  Private conversations and formal correspondence between Botafogo and the CBF accelerated at that time, and were underway for several weeks, with no indication that CBF officials would take preventive action to assure that repeating errors between match referees and VAR officials would not continue to corrupt the results of the campaign.

 

As can be demonstrated by the below summary, the once commanding 'points' lead of Botafogo's record-setting campaign was reduced...from an unprecedented 14 wins out of 17 games, to a level of apparent mediocrity that allowed Palmeiras to launch a historic comeback and win the 2023 title...it has since been proven (by third-party expert analysis) that an astounding number of obvious arbitration errors (and/or manipulations) in critical games, directly caused a suppression of points accumulation by Botafogo and and an addition of points (and red card advantages) to its closest competitors (principally Palmeiras).

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Ultimately, when it became clear in real-time that the VAR official of the Botafogo-Palmeiras game had intervened to argue for a Red Card for Adryelson, and such VAR official was choosing not to show the match referee the clearest camera angle showing the Botafogo defender's legal challenge on the ball, I chose to highlight in real-time the harmful intervention and manipulation of on-field play by off-the-pitch parties whose incompetence (or possibly worse) needed to be challenged.

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I made clear in my full post-game interview that I was NOT talking about financial corruption. I never claimed 'motive', nor did I identify a specific party as responsible. I was suggesting that a heavy amount of error was corrupting our results, and compromising the integrity of the Championship.

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If not for IRD's, VAR failure, and 'match manipulation', Botafogo would clearly have remained

ahead of Palmeiras in the final results of the 2023 Brasileirao Championship, and the true battle for the

Championship would have been disputed between Botafogo, Gremio, Atletico Mineiro and Flamengo.

(Link to "Fair Points" Analysis)

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Please consider the following significant errors in our 2023 Brasileirao: