Words at Famalicao training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Realpe is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Pedro Santos 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.
“I watch every Famalicao game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Trofense runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Squad17 May 2027
6 new faces, and Famalicao 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Riccieli trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Famalicao that is a harder question to answer.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Famalicao. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
74 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Trofense lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Paul Marie has, at Trofense, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Trofense are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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 Felipinho is on it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Sorriso. 1‑0 against Benfica, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Famalicao training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonardo Realpe is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Player ratings22 Mar 2027
Sorriso was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.02. 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.
9 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.
Everything agreed with NAC Breda, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ricardo Valente was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Trofense will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
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 Felipinho is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Trofense, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Trofense would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Frederico Venâncio 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.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Words at Trofense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jorge Teixeira is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Trofense. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
A new face in his position and a shirt he thought he owned suddenly up for discussion. Trofense have promised nothing, which is what clubs promise at this stage.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Felipinho has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
The offer from Braga for Sorriso 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Famalicao, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 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.
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Ronaldo Lumungo has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Famalicao have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Successful dribbles: 22. 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 Famalicao this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
19 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Famalicao are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Marcos Peña was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I did not go to Sporting da Covilhã to sit and watch. I want to come back to Famalicao and fight for my place.” 5 appearances in 16 matches say the rest.
Two goals and a mark of 8.78 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Rodrigo Pinheiro 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.
8 goals in one match, Giorgos Koutsias on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Famalicao and Benfica.
He is 22 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pedro Bondo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Famalicao will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Umar Abubakar is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Famalicao this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 Famalicao know it.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Finn van Breemen 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.
Marked 7.17 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Famalicao had the best player on the pitch.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Antonio Cunha chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Famalicao will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Up for the corner, and Paulo Moreira delivers — 7.83
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Paulo Moreira scored, was marked 7.83, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Famalicao can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“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 Famalicao know it.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Marcos Peña 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.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Feirense had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
$9.0M was the most the club would pay and LA Galaxy were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
$4.7M on the table at Torreense. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Famalicao asked and Rio Ave said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Famalicao this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Lucas Dias 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rodrigo Pinheiro was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Add another name to the list: Sporting da Covilhã have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Gonzalo Pastor. The answer from Famalicao has not changed — yet.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.