27 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Santa Cruz de Natal has to find a result from somewhere.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Santa Cruz de Natal will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Vitor Oliveira scored, was marked 7.94, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz de Natal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Volta Redonda have kept their man, and Santa Cruz de Natal go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
The offer from Jaguares for Felipe Anderson 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.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Guarani have lost him in all but the paperwork.
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.
Guilherme Maranhão 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.
Guarani asked and Monte Azul said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Guilherme Parede was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The deal with Guarani is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Bahia keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Yan Victor 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Santa Cruz de Natal have made the call to Nova Iguaçu. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Squad7 Dec 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Daniel Araujo
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Daniel Araujo has come out of that comparison in the side, and Santa Cruz de Natal have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.