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. Vinicius Rocha is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
35 appearances at Brusque and the goals have stopped going in. Santos lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
8 goals in 35 games at Criciúma — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Santos updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Santos would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
39 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Santos lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
4‑1, and Pedro Raul took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Santos tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings13 Sep 2027
A brace, and Pedro Raul takes the afternoon — 8.64
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Pedro Raul provided it, and the 8.64 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Two goals and a mark of 8.26 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 Santos hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
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.
55 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santos lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.41 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.22 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Santos told Lucas Veríssimo something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
73 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Santos lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Robinho Junior had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
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.
“I watch every Santos game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Pyunik runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The ambition story running backwards, and the one nobody tells: a footballer who wants a smaller ground, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is rarely reported as anything else.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I watch every Santos game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Criciúma runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Santos has been clear about where Miguel Terceros stands, which is more than many ever get.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Santos, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Loan watch12 Apr 2027
João Paulo’s loan is measured in nothing happening
4 clean sheets from 6 appearances at Bahia. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
3 goals in 10 games at Confiança — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Santos updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Lucas Romero has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
In brief
SquadRodinei is training like a man with a point to make