The Brazilian job: How Morecambe's supposed saviour left them staring into oblivion

“It’s your club – be part of it,” states the poster on the window of the Morecambe FC shop, encouraging fans to spend some hard-earned cash inside. It’s an bitterly ironic proposal, given that the club does not seem to belong to anyone and debunks that rosy glow about football’s lesser lights which surfaces on FA Cup 4th Round weekend.

No-one has really known whose club Morecambe is since a 35-year-old Brazilian, Diego Lemos, completed the most improbable purchase of it, last September. The Brazilian national media marvelled at the notion of their man walking through an English seaside town wearing short sleeves in autumn. Lemos took applause before the home game against Carlisle United but he hasn’t been seen since November 17. He seemed to answer his Qatar mobile by mistake to The Independent on one occasion this week and after some curious sounds in the background the call was killed. The number has been engaged in a dozen or so calls to it since.

Lemos arrived on the scene when the benefactor whose name dominates their new stadium exterior, the former Umbro chief executive Peter McGuigan, decided he wanted to sell, after investing to take the club up to the Football League, where they’ve remained for a decade.

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No-one has been prepared to confirm the suggestion that the Brazilian paid around £400,000 for Morecambe but he proved to the Football League (EFL) that he had the funds he claimed and 80 per cent of the club’s shares were transferred to G50 Holdings Ltd, a Co Durham-registered business which he owned.

There was some nice Brazilian colour in the background. Lemos claimed that he had ten years’ experience working a as a football agent in Qatar and had football in his blood. His father, Luisinho Tombo, was the twice leading scorer in the Rio State League of Brazil. His uncle, Caio Cambalhota, was at Flamengo and another, César Maluco, was part of Brazil's 1974 World Cup squad. The national Brazilian broadcaster SBT says it is being told by Lemos’ family in Rio de Janeiro that these claims are genuine.

Yet it didn’t take much scepticism to doubt Lemos’ effusive talk about buying Morecambe because of the “family atmosphere,” having looked “all over Europe for two years.” Morecambe – currently 17th in their division - have a purpose built stadium, with little available land for lucrative property development and in any case, average house prices in the town’s depressed housing market are £100,000. Now that Lemos has vanished, some Brazilian commentators are wondering if it ever stacked up. “It’s up in the North isn’t it? Far from the main media division and in the fourth division.”

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Lemos had a wealthy friend - Qatari businessman Abdulrahman Al Hashemi – whom he installed as co-chairman within days of his ownership being approved. The impression was that much of the money was coming from Al Hashemi, though Lemos had friends from the North East of England, too. Several witnesses describe a North East group suddenly being on the scene and having influence after Lemos had taken over.

The players were paid eight days late at the end of October, by which time there had been seven League Two defeats in 10 for the club, with Remos present at the home defeats to Carlisle and Crawley. Lemos used the club’s website to apologise about the wages, but within two weeks he had gone – and has not been seen since. Just as seriously, Al Hashemi also walked out, unhappy to find that he was unilaterally financing the club.

There have been suggestions in the past few days that Al Hashemi might have been persuaded back, to tide the club over. “We have a meeting that was very positive,” one director told The Independent on Tuesday night, declining to extend the conversation any further for fear of “rocking the boat” and, perhaps, frightening Al Hashemi off.

But what lies beyond the interim is beginning to look extremely bleak for the club. Lemos certainly seems to be history, given that Companies House records show that 99 per cent of the shares in the G50 Holdings, the vehicle he used to acquire Morecambe, were transferred to a Durham-based tax consultant, Graham Burnard on January 11.

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With him out of the picture, others are circling. They include the Sicilian-American businessman Joseph Cala, who spent ten years trying to raise funding for a series of underwater resorts and casinos built in glass-bottomed boats before he tabled and subsequently withdrew a bid to buy Portsmouth in 2012. Cala, or 'the Man from Atlantis' as he became known when claiming he would buy Portsmouth, says he has support from a US private equity group to buy Morecambe. “When Diego left, we know (sic) the club is in financial disaster so we thought it would be helpful to take it over,” Cala said this week.

Also in the wings is North East football agent Peter Harrison, who in 2010 was the public face of the takeover of Belgian club Olympic Charleroi club, which became insolvent and left young players homeless. Harrison is a friend of Lemos and said on Thursday that there was “a new investor willing to take the club on, who’s got the funds, who’s looking at it as a football project, not a construction project.” Another North East businessman, David Williams, this week tweeted an image of the cover page of Morecambe takeover proposal: “The Shrimps Vision 2017-2024.”

McGuigan has not responded to several attempts to discuss the club. Neither have serving directors. Local businessman Nigel Adams, who resigned from the board in December citing a lack of “sufficient financial information from the majority shareholder,” said he could not add to his prior statement.

Morecambe have an excellent Supporters Trust, which is urging the club to begin engaging with them. The Trust has received substantial unprompted pledges of financial support and is willing to help the club, which is under a transfer embargo.

Experienced football dealmakers are just baffled by why 35-year-old Brazilian would want to buy the Football League’s second smallest club in the first place. “You could get buyers, clearing the way for an owner who wants to pay less,” said one. “You could get individuals looking for somewhere to put money. And I suppose you could have a Walter Mitty, if he’s got enough money to be one.”