Jair Monteiro, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.81
A mark of 7.81 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Lamine Bèye and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and João Lourenço was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Caldas, another week without a signature from Tiago Simões.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 1‑1 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
In brief
The dugoutMauro Ribeiro asks for a word with the manager
SquadJair Monteiro, 20, is the weekend’s best young player
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Lamine Bèye did not need any: 7.82, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Caldas have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Lamine Bèye 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.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Squad2 Nov 2026
23 new faces, and Caldas are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
1‑4 to Lusitano Évora, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Caldas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Caldas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mauro Andrade 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.
Half the programme played, position 8, 8 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
A mark of 7.97, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑4 defeat, delivered by Ruben Sousa to a room that had heard them before.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Arnas Voitinovičius is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and João Lourenço was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 34 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
The dugout19 Oct 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 0‑1 Ruben Sousa left the room before anybody could ask which.
At 19 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.
Lamine Bèye and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Dionicio Escalante arrives at 36 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.
Lamine Bèye 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.
100 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.
At 20 he was better than everybody his age in the division for four weeks running, which is harder than one good afternoon. Caldas will try not to make too much of it.
24 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Ruben Sousa on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jair Monteiro is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Ruben Sousa after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Santino Dudar, 19, is the weekend’s best young player
Measured against every other kid in the division and first among them. The senior award is where Caldas would like this to lead.
Leiria go through and Caldas 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.
João Lourenço 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.
Marked 7.82 on 12 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
Successful dribbles: 17. 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Ruben Sousa after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Marked 7.65 at 20, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Caldas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. João Lourenço 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.
Caldas asked and Trujillanos said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Lamine Bèye and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Caldas, another week without a signature from Bruno Ventura.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Caldas are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Pedro Vieira
The dugoutThe view from the dugout
The dugoutBruno Ventura knocks on the manager’s door
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 36 arrived, 21 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Jonathan Silva 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.
Caldas asked and Leixões said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Caldas, another week without a signature from Tiago Simões.
24 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Caldas will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Caldas have made the call to Trujillanos. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Arnas Voitinovičius has come out of that comparison in the side, and Caldas have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Lamine Bèye did not need any: 7.60, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $25.3K — a club that wants Konrad Nfanseu enough to be asked twice.
Caldas offered $26.0K; Penafiel said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Académico de Viseu have kept their man, and Caldas go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Caldas are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Everton has, at Caldas, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $1.1M has been paid because Issoufi Maïga is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $25.3K — a club that wants Argyris Christodoulou enough to be asked twice.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Caldas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
$22.0K on the table at Penafiel. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Caldas offered $26.0K; Famalicao said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Caldas have gone to Académico de Viseu with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Rio Ave keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Mauro Andrade 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 offer went to Famalicao this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Lamine Bèye from Famalicao for $1.3M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. João Bom 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Tiago Simões has just signed for Caldas, and for once the answer mattered.
The deal with Famalicao is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ricardo Machado 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Jose Almeida is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Jose Neves 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ruben Sousa is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Duarte Almeida and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.