Marked for André Lima
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match29 Aug 2029
Santos out of the cup
Bragantino ended it 1‑3. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Match3 Sep 2029
Santos are in among the leaders
Position 2 and 38 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
The terraces3 Sep 2029
The boos come down from three sides
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 9 of the 34 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Diogenes says Santos went back on their word
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad3 Sep 2029
307 appearances across 8 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Player ratings3 Sep 2029
A first appearance André Lima will want to forget — 5.71
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 5.71, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
Squad3 Sep 2029
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Benjamín Rollheiser commits to Santos for another 4 years.
Squad3 Sep 2029
Zé Rafael in a row with a teammate
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.
Player ratings3 Sep 2029
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match18 Aug 2029
The run at home goes on for Santos
19 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Player ratings20 Aug 2029
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.84, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match18 Aug 2029
Santos make it 6 in a row
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Santos have 6 straight wins of it.
Squad20 Aug 2029
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market20 Aug 2029
André Lima has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Santos they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad20 Aug 2029
Zé Rafael in a row with a teammate
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.
Squad20 Aug 2029
Words at Santos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Bîrligea 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.
Match18 Aug 2029
Three points for Santos, 2‑0 the final word against Juventude in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Player ratings20 Aug 2029
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match21 Jul 2029
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 85th, and Atletico Goianiense spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Market23 Jul 2029
Only the photograph left for André Lima
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. André Lima will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Santos the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad23 Jul 2029
Tempers go at Santos
Miguel Monsalve 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.
Squad23 Jul 2029
Benjamín Rollheiser 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.
Squad23 Jul 2029
The manager makes an example of Neymar
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The terraces23 Jul 2029
At 23 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.
Player ratings23 Jul 2029
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.73, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings23 Jul 2029
A performance of 8.46 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match4 Jul 2029
Santos march on in the cup
Vasco da Gama are out and Santos go through, 1‑1 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Match7 Jul 2029
Santos make home a hard place to visit
16 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad9 Jul 2029
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.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Rokenedy is the hero from the spot
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Rokenedy: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Neymar signs on for more
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Neymar and Santos agree another 2 years.
Squad9 Jul 2029
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Santos are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Player ratings9 Jul 2029
Nobody could get near Moisés
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market9 Jul 2029
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Match7 Jul 2029
Bragantino left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad17 Apr 2028
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Santos have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad17 Apr 2028
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.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Words at Santos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Adonis Frías 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.
Boardroom17 Apr 2028
Graduation day at Santos
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Match15 Apr 2028
6 unbeaten for Santos
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 6 matches without defeat is a foundation Santos did not have in the autumn.
Market17 Apr 2028
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. André Lima 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.
Market17 Apr 2028
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Doutor 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.
Market17 Apr 2028
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Eduardo 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.
Market17 Apr 2028
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Márcio Peixoto 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.