Marked for Bernardo Lima
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market5 Jun 2028
AVS come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Porto B did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad5 Jun 2028
Duarte Cunha is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Squad5 Jun 2028
Yann Karamoh 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad17 Apr 2028
Gabri Veiga in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Porto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Jan Bednarek 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.
Squad17 Apr 2028
23 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Gabri Veiga has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Porto 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.
Loan watch17 Apr 2028
26 appearances at Feirense and the goals keep coming. Porto are watching this more closely than the borrowing club would like.
Market17 Apr 2028
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Porto know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad20 Mar 2028
Defences have started doubling up on Samu Aghehowa
27 goals and a season average of 7.46 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Player ratings20 Mar 2028
Two goals and a mark of 9.39 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Match18 Mar 2028
Nobody wants to play Porto right now
6 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad20 Mar 2028
Gabri Veiga in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Porto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match18 Mar 2028
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Samu Aghehowa. 3‑1 against Braga, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Match18 Mar 2028
Porto keep winning on the road
3 away wins in a row. Travelling support is the truest kind, and this season it is being repaid in the only currency that counts.
Squad20 Mar 2028
Hwang In-Beom 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.
Squad20 Mar 2028
The manager makes an example of Hwang In-Beom
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Loan watch20 Mar 2028
The goals keep arriving from Trofim Melnichenko’s exile
9 goals in 25 games at Feirense — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Porto updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match4 Dec 2027
Nobody wins at Porto B
15 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Player ratings6 Dec 2027
A brace, and Domagoj Drožđek takes the afternoon — 8.32
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Domagoj Drožđek provided it, and the 8.32 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Squad6 Dec 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Porto B may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad6 Dec 2027
Bernardo Lima is a better footballer than he was
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.
Squad6 Dec 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Domagoj Drožđek and Porto B agree another 3 years.
Squad6 Dec 2027
Words at Porto B training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yann Karamoh 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces29 Mar 2027
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 9 of the 28 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 25. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad29 Mar 2027
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Gabriel Veron 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.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bernardo Lima is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Tomás Pérez 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.
Match27 Mar 2027
1‑2 to Maritimo, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
A mark of 5.24 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
An afternoon Tiago Andrade will want back
Marked 5.27. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.