The words a physio says slowly. 94 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Água Santa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Água Santa have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Netinho and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
Richard was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.18. 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Rodrygo Tavares on a 3‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
The words a physio says slowly. 122 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Água Santa have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
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 Rafael Verrone is on it.
Rio Branco next, and one man in the Água Santa dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Água Santa has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Água Santa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Cristiano 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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
234% of the income goes out in wages at Água Santa
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
At 39, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.