It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Leixões this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. André Moreira is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Caio Secco 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.
Marked 8.09 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Half the programme played, position 9, 23 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.89 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Leixões this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Leixões training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Caio Secco 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 finished 2‑0, and it was Rúben Pina’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Leixões.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
José Bica was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.55. 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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Leixões will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Lucas Fernandes could afford to be generous.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Rafael Barbosa 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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Leixões are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Luccas Paraízo has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
Nobody at Leixões 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.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.86, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Caio Secco 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Leixões this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 23 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.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
The dugout21 Sep 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.” Lucas Fernandes kept it short after the 3‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.