Flamengo have gone to Internacional with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 76 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The offer from Bahia for Wallace Yan was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“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 The request is on a desk at Flamengo, and it is not being withdrawn.
21 goals in 24 games at Novorizontino — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Flamengo updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.92 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
$2.0M on the table at Athletico Paranaense. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The end came on a Tuesday, as these things usually do: a short meeting, a shorter statement, and José Rocha clearing his office by noon. Football’s cruellest ritual, performed to schedule.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Flamengo will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Not an interim appointment — an institution with an empty coaching office. Somebody unfamiliar will run the sessions this week, and the question of how a club gets into this state is one the board will be asked and will not answer.
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
“I am not thinking past Saturday, and I would advise nobody else to.” The caretaker’s first rule is to pretend the job is small; Interim Coach recited it perfectly.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
21 appearances at Novorizontino and the goals keep coming. Flamengo are watching this more closely than the borrowing club would like.
Squad5 Nov 2035
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iván Román 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Flamengo will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Flamengo have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The first defeat in 10 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Santos; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Flamengo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Flamengo heard it as anything else.
Squad8 Oct 2035
Wallace Yan 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Flamengo will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
1 kept out from twelve yards, and a stadium that will describe each of them for twenty years. A goalkeeper needs one night like this in a career, and this was it.
“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 Flamengo hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Flamengo are no longer polite ones.
Squad1 Oct 2035
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Wallace Yan 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 161 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Flamengo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad10 Sep 2035
Wallace Yan 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.
Filip Bundgaard 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.
10 goals in 13 games at Novorizontino — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Flamengo updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Nobody at Flamengo 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.
Squad10 Sep 2035
6 new faces, and Flamengo are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Kauan Toledo
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Joaquín Freitas provided it, and the 8.50 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Flamengo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Iván Román 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.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
The fixture the calendar is arranged around. Form goes out of the window, the table is not consulted, and for ninety minutes Flamengo will be judged on one thing only.
33 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
1 on the scoresheet on his first appearance and a mark of 8.23 beside it. Most debuts are got through; this one was enjoyed, by him and by everybody watching it.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Pedrinho provided it, and the 8.64 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Flamengo people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Flamengo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.87 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. André has agreed terms with Cruzeiro for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
28 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Flamengo people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“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 Flamengo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Wolverhampton pay $23.7M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
The offer from Guarani for Rodriguinho was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
He is going to Wolverhampton, the club has $23.7M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
4 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
“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 Flamengo know it.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Rocco Vata. 2‑0 against Internacional, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.15 — 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.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Flamengo scored in the 91th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. André provided it, and the 8.13 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The first defeat in 12 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against São Paulo; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Vítor Meer reports back to Flamengo with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
The phone has started ringing about Erick Noriega again, and this time the name on the line is Confiança. Flamengo are listening politely and promising nothing.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Flamengo they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Diego Queiroz had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Flamengo have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“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 Flamengo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom24 Jul 2034
Flamengo close the window on a squad of their own making
7 in and 15 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Felipe Augusto 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.
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
In brief
SquadVitão falls out with a teammate over standards
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Bahia waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Flamengo is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The offer from Atlético Mineiro for Felipe Augusto was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Flamengo and São Paulo have settled on $2.7M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Player ratings3 Jul 2034
A brace, and Rayan Lelis takes the afternoon — 8.05
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Rayan Lelis provided it, and the 8.05 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“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 Flamengo, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.