Caio Alexandre 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Jean Lucas 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.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Bahia can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
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 Everton Ribeiro is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Erick Pulga trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Bahia know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Cruzeiro next, and one man in the Bahia dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Erick has written the date down.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bahia will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bahia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Bahia know it.
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.
Something was said to Cristian Olivera and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Danilo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
At 39 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.21 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 Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.29, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Matheus Régis was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.02. 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.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Gabriel Souza had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.30 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.85, and 2 involvements.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Robinho 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: Bnei Yehuda have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Gabriel Souza. The answer from Santa Cruz has not changed — yet.
Boardroom3 Aug 2026
Nobody left the Santa Cruz dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Santa Cruz, another week without a signature from Robinho.
12 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 2‑3 Marcos Viana left the room before anybody could ask which.