Cristian Tassano 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.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Sampaio Corrêa know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Alex Sandre has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
17 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.
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 Luan Andrey is on it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Maranhão in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Sampaio Corrêa people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Two goals and a mark of 8.48 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sampaio Corrêa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
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.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Wellerson
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
The offer from Henan FC for Ruan Índio 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gérson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A goalkeeper’s error has no defender behind it to tidy it away. He knew before the ball crossed the line, the crowd knew a second later, and there is nothing anybody can say tonight.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Luiz Alves after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.