It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fluminense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Fluminense, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Luciano Acosta trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Ganso is on it.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Fluminense has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
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.
Two hours a week with a tutor, which is the least glamorous thing at Fluminense and the one that decides whether a foreign signing is still here in two years.
Genoa paid $16.3M and Fluminense took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Martinelli has gone, the accounts have $16.3M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Santiago Moreno 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 Fluminense can pretend not to have heard.
Add another name to the list: Athletic Bilbao have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Rodrigo Castillo. The answer from Fluminense has not changed — yet.
Fluminense asked and ABC said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fluminense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jefferson Savarino was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Martinelli signs something — a contract at Fluminense or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Fortaleza next, and one man in the Fluminense dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
5 goals in 13 games at Juazeirense — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Fluminense updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” John Kennedy commits to Fluminense for another 4 years.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jefferson Savarino 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.
Agustín Canobbio 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 Fluminense 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Samuel Xavier’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Fluminense needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Fluminense know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
4 goals in 5 games at Club America — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Fluminense updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.