The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Sport Recife people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Hugo Leonardo reports back to Sport Recife with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Marcos Antonio 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.
Nobody at Sport Recife 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lucca was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout9 Aug 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Wesley Pereira chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Sport Recife people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 3 arrived, 6 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Guilherme Batista has agreed terms with Juventude for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Sabino 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Sport Recife told Luciano something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
The offer from Haras El Hodoud for Gustavo Reis 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.
$6.9M settles it between the clubs for Yuri Tanque
Criciuma have accepted the money. What Sport Recife do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Sport Recife people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Match5 Dec 2026
After 11 games, Sport Recife finally taste it again
The first defeat in 11 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Vitória; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sport Recife have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sport Recife 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.