A 1‑0 win over Atlético Goianiense, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
There were 87 minutes on the clock and Atlético Goianiense had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Avaí did not stop to explain themselves.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Avaí can pretend not to have heard.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Uberlândia waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Avaí is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The deal with ASA is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
The offer from Dinamo Tbilisi for Gaspar 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.
“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.
Matheus Pereira 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.
In brief
Transfer targetsNo deal for Ruan Carneiro at that price
14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Avaí lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
There were 88 minutes on the clock and Ituano had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Avaí did not stop to explain themselves.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Avaí can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Successful dribbles: 23. 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Sorriso 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.
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Avaí lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.73 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Sorriso, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.76
A mark of 7.76 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.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.34 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Jamerson has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Avaí and Santa Cruz de Natal, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
In brief
SquadWords at Avaí training over how hard people work
Successful dribbles: 27. 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Avaí this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Allyson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Sorriso 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.
Still no offer on the table, and Zé Ricardo’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
13 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.