The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Flamengo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Flamengo can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Realpe 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.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Andrew trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Flamengo know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against America Mineiro in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Flamengo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Nobody at Flamengo will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The captaincy has been taken off Giorgian De Arrascaeta. Flamengo will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Flamengo heard it as anything else.
“I did not go to Maccabi Petach Tikva to sit and watch. I want to come back to Flamengo and fight for my place.” 1 appearances in 32 matches say the rest.
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.
Nobody at Flamengo will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
14 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Lorran had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.97 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Andrew 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.
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Gustavo Scarpa obliged against Criciuma. 2‑0 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Flamengo.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Bruno Henrique provided it, and the 8.87 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Two goals and a mark of 8.30 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The offer went to São Paulo this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Lorran had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Juan Sayago did not need any: 7.61, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
$2.8M was the most the club would pay and Vasco da Gama were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Flamengo people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The clubs have shaken hands with Atlético Mineiro; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Internacional pay $11.9M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
He is going to Internacional, the club has $11.9M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Flamengo they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.81 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Jorginho 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Beitar Jerusalem will make the call about Evertton Araújo this week. Flamengo have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Flamengo would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
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 Jorge Carrascal has written the date down.
In brief
The dugoutAyrton Lucas knocks on the manager's door