Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Tuna Luso waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bahia is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Bahia asked and Chapecoense said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $674.9K — a club that wants Igor Formiga enough to be asked twice.
Jean Lucas 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.
A club from his own country has asked the question, and he has never pretended he did not want to be asked. Bahia have a conversation ahead of them that they will not win with money.
Done, and with games to spare. Next season has floodlit nights against clubs from other countries in it, and the accounts have a line they did not have last year.
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market14 Dec 2026
Emersonn arrives at Bahia in a $8.6M statement of intent
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Bahia have paid $8.6M for Emersonn, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
15 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Boavista did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $8.2M for Crystopher, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
A brace, and Jean Lucas takes the afternoon — 8.27
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jean Lucas provided it, and the 8.27 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Caio Alexandre will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Bahia escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Bahia, and it is not being withdrawn.
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.82 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Jean Lucas 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 Everton Ribeiro was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Rodrigo Nestor was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.30. 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Caio Alexandre was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.14. 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Everton Ribeiro provided it, and the 8.34 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Jean Lucas 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.
Chances created: 15. Nothing on the scoresheet and everything in the match: the pass before the pass, over and over, until the defence stopped guessing right.
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Two goals and a mark of 8.14 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Caio Alexandre 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 unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Jean Lucas 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jean Lucas. 3‑2 against Grêmio, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The name of Mateo Sanabria has come up in conversations Bahia were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Edu, and the manager let it.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Marcos Rocha kept it short after the 3‑2 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Ruan Pablo, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 8.14
A mark of 8.14 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Edu is living that version at Bahia, and it tends to show in the first month.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.99 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Caio Alexandre scored, was marked 7.86, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
“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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jean Lucas 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.
Santiago Ramos Mingo 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.