4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mixto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑3 André Alves left the room before anybody could ask which.
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.
Successful dribbles: 15. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Caio Barbosa
SquadHeitor Silva falls out with a teammate over standards
0‑3 against Água Santa, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Benjamín Catalán was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
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 Mixto would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad24 Aug 2026
7 new faces, and Mixto are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The dugout24 Aug 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 1‑3 defeat, delivered by André Alves to a room that had heard them before.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Mixto are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
He is doing things every Saturday that nobody around him can answer. It is flattering for a season and a problem after that, and Mixto know which stage they are at.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 18 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 7.97, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
A cup hiding at Vitória leaves Mixto explaining themselves
0-3, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Roberto Correia, 14, plays like he has been here for years — 7.71
A mark of 7.71 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 14-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. George Pitbull has, at Mixto, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
6 goals in one match, Luidy on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Mixto and Ceilândia.
1 on the scoresheet on his first appearance and a mark of 7.47 beside it. Most debuts are got through; this one was enjoyed, by him and by everybody watching it.
The 88th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Luiz Bezerra decided nobody was going anywhere. Aparecidense had no time left to answer.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 13 actions, 6.57, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
He is 14 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Daniel Bezerra is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Samuel Araujo 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Samuel Borges 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Luiz Bezerra is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.