A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. CRB will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Luiz Phellype 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.
Nobody at CRB 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. CRB know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at CRB that is a harder question to answer.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at CRB, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. CRB will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether CRB can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Luiz Phellype 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Mateus Batista has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at CRB, another week without a signature from Gegê.
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.
Danielzinho has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CRB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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.
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 Geovane is on it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CRB have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Luiz Phellype 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.
Add another name to the list: Moreirense have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Breno Herculano. The answer from CRB has not changed — yet.
$42.0K was the most the club would pay and Chapecoense were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Fábio Alemão 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.
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 Dadá Belmonte is on it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CRB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fábio Alemão 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Igor Teixeira could afford to be generous.
Luiz Phellype 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.
37 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Igor Teixeira chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.