0‑2 to Operário Ferroviário, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad30 Nov 2026
João Vieira falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
The dugout30 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 Marcelo Silva left the room before anybody could ask which.
Successful dribbles: 14. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
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.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Hayner's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Marquinhos Gabriel 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Vila Nova training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vitor Mendes 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 Anderson Jesus trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Rafa Silva signs something — a contract at Vila Nova or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Next up on the road: Novorizontino, position 5. The supporters who go will talk about it all week and the ones who do not will check their phones at ten to five.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 34 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Vila Nova is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and João Vieira was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
“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.
Athletico Paranaense arrive as leaders. A side at the top is beaten roughly once a month, and the club that does it gets a week it remembers for a year.
0‑3 to Atlético Goianiense, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Marquinhos Gabriel 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vitor Mendes was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout28 Sep 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 0‑3 Marcelo Silva left the room before anybody could ask which.
Nobody at Vila Nova 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.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.83 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Marquinhos Gabriel 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.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Emerson Urso was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.13. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Marked 8.06 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
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.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Marcelo Silva could afford to be generous.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.57 for the rest of it.
Marquinhos Gabriel 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Vila Nova training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Vitor Mendes 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.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.