It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tuna Luso this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Feb 2029
Words at Tuna Luso training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lucas Márquez 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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Guarabira signs something — a contract at Tuna Luso or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Tuna Luso know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Tuna Luso will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“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 The request is on a desk at Tuna Luso, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Tuna Luso is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Cleyton 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Tuna Luso know it.
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 Igor Pereira is on it.
In brief
Looking aheadTuna Luso take on the side everybody is chasing
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Pepê Fermino did not need any: 7.65, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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.
Cleyton 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.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Words at Tuna Luso training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pepê Fermino 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.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 38 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
“I watch every Tuna Luso game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Goianésia runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Yael Ramallo 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.
Squad1 Nov 2027
Dario Bordón 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.
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 borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Julián Irazoque has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Joaquín Cepeda's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
The club is not barred from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every name linked with Deportivo Italiano this window arrives with a name leaving in the same sentence.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Tomás Suyo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.