It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Athletic Club this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Athletic Club, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The words a physio says slowly. 43 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Athletic Club 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. Keiner Hurtado has just signed for Athletic Club, and for once the answer mattered.
Athletic Club asked and Grêmio said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Athletic Club are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
The words a physio says slowly. 50 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.” Athletic Club have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Rickson 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Flamengo have kept their man, and Athletic Club go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Luiz Filipe 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Yan is living that version at Athletic Club, and it tends to show in the first month.
Avaí held the lead for 2 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Athletic Club answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
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.
Rickson 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 never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
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.
A side in position 19 visits next. The result will not make anybody’s season and it could quietly break the shape of one, which is why the manager has been watching the video since Sunday.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Athletic Club this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Athletic Club will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Athletic Club, another week without a signature from Rickson.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Coritiba in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
0‑4 to Atlético Goianiense, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
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.
Successful dribbles: 19. 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.
Kauan and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑5 defeat, delivered by Tiago Amaral to a room that had heard them before.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Júnior Barbosa and Athletic Club agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
0‑4 against Ferroviária, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Kauan did not need any: 8.09, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Figueiredo has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Athletic Club have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
He is 21 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Léo Chú in the middle of it, and Maricá unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
At 21 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Willian Ribeiro has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Marcos Assis has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Rodrigo Correia has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Mateus Nogueira is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
3 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Néstor Caicedo will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Athletic Club escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Kauan 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gian Franco Cabezas was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 3‑3, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Criciúma in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
It is a strip of cloth and it decides nothing on a Saturday. It still tells the dressing room exactly whose opinion the manager values, which is the whole point of it.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.