2‑0 against Universidad Catolica, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Jhon Arias was at the centre of the description.
Two goals and a mark of 8.42 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 The request is on a desk at Palmeiras, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Vitor Roque, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.67
A mark of 7.67 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
At 21 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Nobody at Palmeiras 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.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palmeiras this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Vitor Roque is on it.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Palmeiras told Emiliano Martínez something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Palmeiras. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
3 goals in 9 games at Club America — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Palmeiras updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Criciúma go through and Palmeiras go home, 1‑2 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Palmeiras have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Alexander Barboza 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 13 actions, 6.73, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Marked 8.14 — 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 manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Bruno Fuchs
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
In brief
The dugoutThe view from the dugout
The dugoutAndreas Pereira has become a man the manager trusts
A 1‑0 win over América Mineiro, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 96th minute. América Mineiro will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Successful dribbles: 31. 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Palmeiras can pretend not to have heard.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
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.
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.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Luiz Freitas was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Palmeiras dressing room was either.
Nobody at Palmeiras is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Alexander Barboza has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.