4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Treze this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dione is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Néstor Esteche trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Gustavo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Max, and the manager let it.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Luiz Ribeiro to a room that had heard them before.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.99 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dione was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Luiz Ribeiro after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Two goals and a mark of 9.15 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.95 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Treze this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Treze is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Alex Álvarez. 2‑1 against Sousa, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Alex Álvarez had Treze level again within 2 minutes, and Sousa never got to play with a lead at all.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Gustavo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dione was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Diego Carvalho has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Fera has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. William Barbio has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Alexandre Tam has written the date down.
He looks like a man who lives here now rather than one who is working here. It took most of a season, and at Treze the difference is visible from the back of the stand.
William Barbio and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and Treze know which stage they are at.
25 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Treze, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody at Treze is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Juazeirense? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Santa Cruz in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Treze has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Treze know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 15 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Treze this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Treze and Central, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
The name of Ezequiel González has come up in conversations Treze were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and Treze know which stage they are at.