It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pouso Alegre this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Squad21 Jun 2027
Léo Mancha 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.
Internacional have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Pouso Alegre and Maringá have settled on $1.5M. 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 ratings14 Jun 2027
Vitinho, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.23
A mark of 8.23 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Criciúma have kept their man, and Pouso Alegre go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Carlos Miguel 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Igor Barbosa is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Jean Carlo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Léo Mancha was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Renan, and the manager let it.
The dugout7 Jun 2027
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 0‑1 Wesley Lima left the room before anybody could ask which.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Jean Carlo commits to Pouso Alegre for another 2 years.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Words at Pouso Alegre training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Porfirio 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.
Still no offer on the table, and Adriano’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
In brief
The dugoutTiago Rangel knocks on the manager’s door
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Diego Porfirio was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
“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 Botafogo 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 Botafogo 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.
“I watch every Botafogo game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Cuiabá runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
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 Vitinho is on it.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Botafogo would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
2 goals in 21 games at Oviedo — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Botafogo updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Diogo Barroso is living that version at Pouso Alegre, and it tends to show in the first month.
He is 20, and nobody at Pouso Alegre signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Adriano has agreed terms with Pouso Alegre for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cristian Medina was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Bastos 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
13 new faces, and Botafogo 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.
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Júnior Santos
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Márcio Souza was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Botafogo dressing room was either.
In brief
Looking aheadBotafogo take on the side everybody is chasing
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Adriano has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Pouso Alegre have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Wesley Lima after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Ricardinho is 37 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Pouso Alegre will not keep him by pretending otherwise.