The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Mirassol is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Mirassol have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Rodrigues 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.
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.
Nobody at Mirassol 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Mirassol has been clear about where Thomazella stands, which is more than many ever get.
Boa next, and one man in the Mirassol dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“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 The request is on a desk at Mirassol, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Words at Mirassol training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Eduardo 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.
Rodrigues 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Biel has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Mirassol told Tiago something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Negueba signs something — a contract at Mirassol or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Eduardo has been around long enough to know what the spring feels like when it goes wrong, and he can feel it. A dressing room that is frightened plays like one.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Igor Cariús trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Edson Carioca has written the date down.
The mood at Mirassol has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Mirassol hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
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.
Alesson 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Mirassol, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Grêmio will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Ceará the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Grêmio will enjoy reviewing.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
A brace, and Francis Amuzu takes the afternoon — 8.72
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Francis Amuzu provided it, and the 8.72 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Grêmio this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Mirassol paid $900.0K and Grêmio took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Weverton, and the manager let it.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Marlon's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 71 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Two goals and a mark of 8.93 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
$72.0K on the table at Sport Recife. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Héctor Zabala has just signed for Mirassol, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Mirassol training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Eduardo 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.
Rodrigues 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.
Tiago is 18, and Mirassol have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 79 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The offer went to Grêmio this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Mirassol had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Grasshopper, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Lucas Souza has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Mirassol have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Baiano is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Pedro Neves to a room that had heard them before.