A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Elias: 3 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Operário Ferroviário 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 Juan Pablo Zuluaga was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 23 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.
7 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.
Marquinhos 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Juan Pablo Zuluaga was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Lucas Araujo 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.
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 88. Maringá had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
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 Jhan Pool Torres is on it.
Vinicius Diniz 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.
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.
Marked 7.64. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Fábio Pereira kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
0‑3 to Goiás, 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Samuel Costa is living that version at Operário Ferroviário, and it tends to show in the first month.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Renato Fernandes is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
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 Vinicius Diniz is on it.