Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around União they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” União have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Wilson. 1‑0 against Juazeirense, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The words a physio says slowly. 64 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.
“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 The request is on a desk at União, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at União this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 35 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
127 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. União lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kleiton 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at União, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Atlético Mineiro is saying, and nobody at União is enjoying the guessing.
“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; União are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
A loan enquiry to Paysandu: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Tamaré'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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation União are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
At 37 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.90 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. União will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at União, another week without a signature from Márcio.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” João Figueiredo kept it short after the 2‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.