It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Flamengo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I did not go to Defensor Sporting to sit and watch. I want to come back to Flamengo and fight for my place.” 2 appearances in 37 matches say the rest.
At 22 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.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Léo Ortiz 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.
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
Lorran was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.49. 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.
Marked 8.42 — 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.
Giorgian De Arrascaeta 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.
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Flamengo have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Léo Ortiz 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.
13 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
10 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Flamengo scored in the 117th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Position 3, 24 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Flamengo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Diego Pérez has just signed for Flamengo, and for once the answer mattered.
Add another name to the list: Boa have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Rayan Lucas. The answer from Flamengo has not changed — yet.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Victor Hugo 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.
Squad10 Jul 2028
Léo Ortiz 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.
“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.
Giorgian De Arrascaeta 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 watch every Flamengo game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Defensor Sporting runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Beaten 0‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Léo Ortiz 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.
Giorgian De Arrascaeta 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.
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 hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Lorran did not need any: 8.16, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“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.
Giorgian De Arrascaeta 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.
Defensive actions: 22, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Squad22 May 2028
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Léo Ortiz 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.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Pedro was one of the reasons people came, and $20.3M does not replace that by itself.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ramahlwe Hlatshwayo has just signed for Flamengo, and for once the answer mattered.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.55 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Giorgian De Arrascaeta 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.
7 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Words at Flamengo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrew 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.
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Mirassol kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Flamengo will be asked about the last half hour all week.
The offer from Boa for Rayan Lucas 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Guillermo Varela will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Flamengo the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Flamengo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Andrew: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Flamengo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
19 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
The words a physio says slowly. 63 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.
A 3‑0 win over ABC, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings12 Jul 2027
Camargo, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.67
A mark of 7.67 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
19 goals in 19 games at Danubio — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Flamengo updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Giorgian De Arrascaeta 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.
10 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Flamengo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.