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 Michael Rangel is on it.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at CSA, another week without a signature from Alê Santos.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
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 CSA that is a harder question to answer.
Position 6, 46 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
Breno Pereira 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.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The dugout20 Sep 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Caio Gomes was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the CSA dressing room was either.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Iberia 1999 had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
1 for Thiago Maia, marked 7.95, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Marked 8.07 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Alê Santos has his answer from CSA; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The dugout30 Aug 2027
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.” Caio Gomes kept it short after the 3‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Add another name to the list: Iberia 1999 have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about João Lucas. The answer from CSA has not changed — yet.
At 18 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.
Pablo Thomaz 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 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CSA have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
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.
A 3‑1 win over Operário Ferroviário, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
At 18 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.
Player ratings16 Aug 2027
João Lucas was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.41. 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gerson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Atlético Mineiro have kept their man, and CSA go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 2 arrived, 6 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Camacho 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.
Position 6, 30 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
The dugout26 Jul 2027
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 1‑3 defeat, delivered by Caio Gomes to a room that had heard them before.
Internacional have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
The offer from Vasco da Gama for Enzo 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 CSA, and it is not being withdrawn.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Pepeu was one of the reasons people came, and $470.0K does not replace that by itself.
CSA asked and Atlético Mineiro said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSA this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
11 combined actions and 6.98. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around CSA people have started saying his name in the past tense.
$2.9M was the most the club would pay and Grêmio 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.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about CSA and Athletic Club in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
He is 18 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.
7.72, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
A point taken on 90 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CSA have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. David Nogueira did not need any: 7.65, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Marked 7.61. There is a kind of forward whose value only shows up when you count what he was involved in rather than what he finished, and this is the day that argument makes itself.
Camacho 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 first defeat in 5 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Operário Ferroviário; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CSA can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CSA have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSA this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
At 18 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Daniel Xavier 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.
At 18 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSA this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at CSA, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Pablo Thomaz 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.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. CSA will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
9 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Gerson trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The clubs have shaken hands with Monte Azul; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. David Nogueira is 17, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Arthurzinho has just signed for CSA, and for once the answer mattered.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. CSA have paid $490.0K for Jefferson Maciel, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $278.1K — a club that wants Lucas Aruba enough to be asked twice.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CSA this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Jefferson Maciel from Avaí for $490.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
The offer went to Internacional 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.
Position 12, 25 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation CSA are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Marcel Scalese has come out of that comparison in the side, and CSA have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Rafael Broetto
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Santos have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Santos is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Nicola Profeta has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Gabriel Barbosa 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. David Nogueira is 17, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
9 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Two goals and a mark of 9.04 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Enzo Boer, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.10
A mark of 8.10 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The offer from Enyimba for Mateus Xavier 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 13 goals between Santos and Trem, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.