“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” São Luiz have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Dankler 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.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Position 10, 17 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at São Luiz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Words at São Luiz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fáider Burbano 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at São Luiz can tell you which week it ends in.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Rafael Correia left the room before anybody could ask which.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at São Luiz has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
Dankler and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad16 Nov 2026
9 new faces, and São Luiz are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Cascavel in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at São Luiz would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Kaynan signs something — a contract at São Luiz or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Obaid Salem is living that version at São Luiz, and it tends to show in the first month.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what São Luiz can pretend not to have heard.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fáider Burbano was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Samuel Moura is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Fernando Alves 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.
Dankler 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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at São Luiz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fáider Burbano 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.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 10 combined actions and a mark of 6.74, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
A 1‑0 win over Guarani, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Wesley Nardo, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.