It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fluminense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Martinelli 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 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.
Facundo Bernal 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.
Squad17 Jan 2028
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luciano Acosta 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.
Martinelli 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 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Igor Rabello will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Fluminense the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fluminense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Fluminense can pretend not to have heard.
At 41 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.46 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Fluminense heard it as anything else.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luciano Acosta 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.
15 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
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.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guilherme Arana 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.
Marked 8.64 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Marked 8.24 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Fluminense lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
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.
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.
Parana paid $200.0K and Fluminense took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
58 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Fluminense lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad31 May 2027
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guilherme Arana 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.
Marked 8.36 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fluminense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings31 May 2027
Guilherme Arana was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.04. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“I watch every Fluminense game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at São Paulo runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Fluminense can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.16 at 42, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Martinelli 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.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fluminense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 9.22 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Fluminense, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Shots: 5. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
2‑2 against America de Cali, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Nonato was at the centre of the description.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 86th, and Botafogo spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.19 at 40, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Marcelo Pitaluga is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 19-year-old it feels ownership of. Isack has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Marked 8.79 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Juan Pablo Freytes and Fluminense agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Fluminense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luciano Acosta 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.
9 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
Nobody at Fluminense will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
4 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.