Rafael Carvalheira 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Fábio Alemão 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for CRB. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
11 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Danielzinho trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Two goals and a mark of 8.40 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
7.27, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Luiz Phellype 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.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about CRB and América Mineiro in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fábio Alemão was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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 3‑4 Igor Teixeira left the room before anybody could ask which.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Danielzinho trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation CRB are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
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 has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Luiz Phellype signs something — a contract at CRB or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against América Mineiro in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Mikael has written the date down.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at CRB, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at CRB would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CRB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fábio Alemão 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.
Every club in football 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 somebody has tried it.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Igor Teixeira could afford to be generous.
Luiz Phellype 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fábio Alemão was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
8 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
8.12. 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.
10 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.
It needed Rafael Carvalheira to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Volta Redonda, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Igor Teixeira after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Nobody at CRB 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.
In brief
The dugoutDouglas Baggio has become a man the manager trusts
Luiz Phellype 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.
37 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Igor Teixeira chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fábio Alemão was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
7.72, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. CRB had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
The dugout14 Sep 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.” Igor Teixeira kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
18 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CRB lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Rafael Carvalheira wants continental football; whether CRB can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fábio Alemão 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Guilherme Estrella did not need any: 8.00, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Luiz Phellype 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.
He is 23 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Douglas Baggio. 1‑0 against Operário Ferroviário, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The match ball belongs to Dadá Belmonte, whose 4 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
A brace, and Luiz Phellype takes the afternoon — 9.63
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Luiz Phellype provided it, and the 9.63 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
A brace, and Danielzinho takes the afternoon — 8.41
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Danielzinho provided it, and the 8.41 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Luiz Phellype 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.
11 goals in one match, Dadá Belmonte on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of CRB and Amazonas.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fábio Alemão 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Caetano is living that version at CRB, and it tends to show in the first month.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Breno Herculano was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.63. 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Fábio Alemão 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.
He is 23 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.
Marked 8.22 — 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.
Luiz Phellype 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 academy exists for exactly this morning. Carlos Pacheco has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Willian Monteiro is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Lucas Gomes has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Wesley Lima is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Igor Teixeira after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CRB this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fábio Alemão was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Douglas Baggio. 2‑0 against Vila Nova, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.02 — 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.
24 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Squad3 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and CRB 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.