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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at ASA would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. ASA lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Leozão 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 words a physio says slowly. 66 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ASA this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Questions about Júnior Rocha on the training pitch
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
The words a physio says slowly. 73 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ASA this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Caio Souza 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Júnior Rocha 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.
The dugout8 Mar 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Paulo Silva's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.