Semeu Commey damages knee ligaments — 102 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 102 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Werton 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.
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.
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. Rodrigo Freitas is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Cláudio Araújo 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.
Marked 8.03 — 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.
In brief
SquadCláudio Araújo falls out with a teammate over standards
Guilherme Pires 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Leixões training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Werton 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.