It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Envigado this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Bleiner Agrón has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Envigado.
Squad20 Sep 2027
7 new faces, and Envigado 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.
“I watch every Envigado game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Yenisey runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Envigado know it.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Andrés Tovar 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.
In brief
The dugoutBleiner Agrón asks for a word with the manager
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Palmeiras, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody at Palmeiras 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Palmeiras would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
17 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Palmeiras lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Juventus paid $51.9M and Palmeiras took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Palmeiras people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Palmeiras will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Vitor Roque has gone, the accounts have $51.9M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
17 goals in 22 games at Club America — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Palmeiras updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Alexander Barboza 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.
“I watch every Palmeiras game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Coritiba runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.