The words a physio says slowly. 89 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
The offer from Ghazl El Mahalla for Miguel Terceros was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
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.
Add another name to the list: Petrojet have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about JP Murilo. The answer from Santos has not changed — yet.
Nobody at Santos 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 has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Rafael Leão signs something — a contract at Santos or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Successful dribbles: 37. 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.
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Moisés obliged against America Mineiro. 2‑1 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Santos.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 93th minute. America Mineiro will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Santos they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Álvaro Barreal 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Neymar was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Álvaro Barreal was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Rodrigo Bezerra after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
7 goals in 37 games at Portsmouth — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Santos updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Neymar signs something — a contract at Santos or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nobody at Santos 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.
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santos lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Words at Santos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Neymar 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.
Rony 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.
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 Igor Vinicius is on it.
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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Caio Araújo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Santos the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Lucas Veríssimo 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.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 2‑2, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
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 board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 92th minute. Bragantino will replay every second of the added time for a week.
The offer from Oleksandriya for Miguel Terceros was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Santos is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Santos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Neymar 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.
5 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Bragantino were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.