The words a physio says slowly. 37 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadA muscle injury sidelines Rokenedy for 16 days
The words a physio says slowly. 46 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.
Robinho 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 words a physio says slowly. 53 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
61 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Santa Cruz have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Robinho 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.
70 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Gabriel Souza is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
77 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Robinho 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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
143% of the income goes out in wages at Santa Cruz
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.
84 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Judge me on him.” Managers do not say that kind of thing by accident — it moves the pressure from Matheus Régis’s shoulders onto his own, and both of them know it.
In brief
SquadQuirino is training like a man with a point to make
91 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Robinho 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.
98 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
105 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Robinho 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 month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Matheus Régis is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Felipe Alves damages knee ligaments — 113 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 113 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.
Matheus Régis had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Oeste were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
A brace, and Matheus Régis takes the afternoon — 8.16
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Matheus Régis provided it, and the 8.16 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
6 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
121 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Santa Cruz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Robinho 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Matheus Vinicius, and the manager let it.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Eurico Lima 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.
Felipe Alves damages knee ligaments — 129 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 129 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratingsEurico Lima spends the afternoon fouling
2Edition
The Santa Cruz Chronicle
10 Aug 2026
From our football correspondentUneasy
Squad10 Aug 2026
Felipe Alves damages knee ligaments — 137 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 137 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Santa Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Santa Cruz have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Robinho 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Santa Cruz, another week without a signature from Robinho.
In brief
SquadEurico Lima falls out with a teammate over standards