It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Alverca can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Words at Alverca training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zé Rafael 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 demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Léo Chú is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Alexandre Martins after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Squad7 Dec 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Nabil Touaizi
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Nabil Touaizi has come out of that comparison in the side, and Alverca have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
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 7.86 for the rest of it.
Zé Rafael 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 Diogo Spencer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 9 actions, 6.79, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
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.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager’s verdict
The terracesEverybody has an opinion about Matheus Mendes
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Alverca and Arouca in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Diogo Spencer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
15 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 2‑4 defeat, delivered by Alexandre Martins to a room that had heard them before.
Chances created: 10. Not on the scoresheet and not remotely anonymous — a passing performance that pulled a defence apart without leaving a mark on the column that gets read.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 89th, and AVS spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Paulo Agostinho provided it, and the 8.39 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Toni Tamarit did not need any: 7.74, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Alverca training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zé Rafael 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.
Sergi Gómez 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.
1‑4 to Benfica, 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.
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 7.70 for the rest of it.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Bahia keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Alverca ran out of time with Santa Clara. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Mafra have kept their man, and Alverca go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Zé Rafael 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 Diogo Spencer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Alverca close the window on a squad of their own making
12 in and 23 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Diogo Spencer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ikker Julian 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.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Benfica in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Ian Luccas has moved up it.