Add another name to the list: Maricá have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Thiago Borges. The answer from Horizonte has not changed — yet.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Remo have kept their man, and Horizonte go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Horizonte are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Rodrygo Mendes after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Horizonte had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at São Bernardo, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Boardroom26 Jul 2027
Deadline passes with 5 signed and 3 gone
That is the business done at Horizonte until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
The deal that would have taken Thiago Gomes to Central has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Horizonte with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Horizonte this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Horizonte asked and Amazonas 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 21 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.
Samuel 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.
Horizonte asked and Lagarto said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Samuel Lima was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Matheus Henrique, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.94
A mark of 7.94 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The deal with Corinthians is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Horizonte had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Figueirense, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. São Bernardo have kept their man, and Horizonte go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Guilherme Pacheco was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Horizonte people have started saying his name in the past tense.
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Horizonte lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Horizonte can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings7 Jun 2027
Samuel, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.68
A mark of 7.68 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Horizonte this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atlético Mineiro this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
11 combined actions and 7.09. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
13 clean sheets from 17 appearances at Caracas. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
“I did not go to Horizonte to sit and watch. I want to come back to Atlético Mineiro and fight for my place.” 7 appearances in 22 matches say the rest.
It needed Mateo Cassierra to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Remo, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout31 May 2027
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.” Diego Fonseca chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
30 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Horizonte lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Horizonte can pretend not to have heard.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Facundo Castillo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Conceding is one thing; the response is what tells you about a dressing room. Thiago Gomes had Horizonte level again within 1 minutes, and Sousa never got to play with a lead at all.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Horizonte are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Atlético Mineiro, and it is not being withdrawn.
1 for Lyanco, marked 7.81, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Renan Lodi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.20. 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.
12 clean sheets from 14 appearances at Caracas. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Horizonte have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Thiago Gomes and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad3 May 2027
Words at Horizonte training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Samuel Lima 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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Samuel is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Atlético Mineiro have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 21 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.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Atlético Mineiro hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
“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 Atlético Mineiro, and 0 appearances in 14 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at Atlético Mineiro 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.
10 appearances at Caracas and the goals have stopped going in. Atlético Mineiro lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
In brief
The dugoutVictor Hugo knocks on the manager’s door
“I did not go to Horizonte to sit and watch. I want to come back to Atlético Mineiro and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 10 matches say the rest.
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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Atlético Mineiro, another week without a signature from Dudu.
“32 caps. I have loved every one, and it is somebody else’s turn.” At 34 he has stepped away from his country and is going nowhere at Atlético Mineiro.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dudu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Horizonte will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bruno Machado is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The deal with Criciúma is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Horizonte asked and Criciúma said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Everybody at Horizonte saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 36 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Everything agreed with Atlético Mineiro, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Lucas Rodrigues wants continental football; whether Horizonte can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Facundo Castillo 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.
$35.0K was the most the club would pay and Náutico 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Antônio Cunha was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.