“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 The request is on a desk at Vitória Guimarães B, and it is not being withdrawn.
A 2‑1 win over São João de Ver, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Matija Mitrović 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Rafael Barbosa on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Rafael Peixoto trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nobody at Vitória Guimarães B is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
11 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at Vitória Guimarães B, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Caldas waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Vitória Guimarães B is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Beaten 5 times, 1 saves, and an afternoon that will go on his record whether it was his fault or the defence’s. It is the quiet unfairness of the position.
In brief
The dugoutTony Strata knocks on the manager’s door
Position 9 and 17 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vitória Guimarães B can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Vitória Guimarães B they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Diogo Ferreira 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 had been thinking. Tony Strata 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vitória Guimarães B can pretend not to have heard.
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 message was aimed at the stands as much as the dressing room: Alison Calegari plays, and the argument is closed until the manager decides otherwise.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.83 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“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 Vitória Guimarães B, and it is not being withdrawn.
Diogo Ferreira 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.
Position 8 and 21 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
A season average of 7.05 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Vitória Guimarães B know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Diogo Ferreira 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.
“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 Vitória Guimarães B, and it is not being withdrawn.
Diogo Ferreira 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.
Nothing is announced when this happens and everybody knows. He is a bigger part of the plan at Vitória Guimarães B than he was a month ago, and the training ground worked that out before the team sheet said so.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
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.
Ricardo Rocha 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.
“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 Vitória Guimarães B, and it is not being withdrawn.
Marco Cruz 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.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Nothing is announced when this happens and everybody knows. He is a bigger part of the plan at Vitória Guimarães B than he was a month ago, and the training ground worked that out before the team sheet said so.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 21 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
João Oliveira 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.
A conversation is coming this week. Vitória Guimarães B will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Marco Cruz 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.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
At 20 he was better than everybody his age in the division for four weeks running, which is harder than one good afternoon. Vitória Guimarães B will try not to make too much of it.