“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Port Vale have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Port Vale training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rui Costa 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.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
Words at Port Vale training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rui Costa 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 is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
In brief
SquadMarko Maroši has seen what the next man earns
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Ben Amos: 3 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Exeter City go through and Port Vale go home, 0‑0 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Erik Sviatchenko 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Rui Costa 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.
Twelve yards, a goalkeeper guessing, and it still did not go in. He will take the next one, and every soul in the ground will hold their breath.
The dugout21 Sep 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 1‑2 Michael Moore left the room before anybody could ask which.
“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 Port Vale, and it is not being withdrawn.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Brentford have kept their man, and Port Vale go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bruno Moreira 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.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Successful dribbles: 14. 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.