Gabriel Veron 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.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say João Costa is on it.
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 Edson Júnior has written the date down.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Felgueiras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Words at Felgueiras training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Léo Teixeira 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Felgueiras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rafael Barbosa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Felgueiras 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Felgueiras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Fabricio has, at Felgueiras, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Marked 9.44. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Felgueiras.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Léo Teixeira 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.
Successful dribbles: 20. 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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Sporting CP B spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
In brief
The dugoutThe team sheet said everything about João Costa
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Felgueiras will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Two goals and a mark of 9.41 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Felgueiras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rafael Barbosa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Gabriel Cabral has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
A performance of 8.25 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Michel Costa was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.08. 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.