The vote that ended Glinho's first spell at Cruzeiro was not close. When it closed on 16 September, Chiesa had 7,517 votes. Glinho, champion of Brazil a season earlier, had none.

Forty-four minutes later a second vote opened, with a single name on it. It was his.

Four days after that, he was back in the dugout. Nobody has explained the round trip in public. The blockchain records the totals, not who cast them. But the episode tells you plenty about a manager who has spent 16 months winning things for a club in which he does not own a single share.

The hired hand

In May 2025 Cruzeiro's manager had just quit. Libertaerx, who is still the club's largest influence holder with 7,871, posted an advert:

I am looking for a new manager for Cruzeiro, 1st Brazil League. Samba resigned due to difficulties with the timezone.

He asked for "Active management (no orange dots)" and "Proven success in managing other team(s)". Shareholders voted Glinho in 13 days later, on 7 June 2025. His on-chain record shows no other club, before or since.

He has never held influence in Cruzeiro or anywhere else. His 99 wage payments total 81.81 SVC, and his account balance is 12.81 SVC. On Discord there is almost nothing. One user, jgradi, has posted four messages in 569 days. In January he introduced himself as "the manager of Cruzeiro". At that time Glinho was the only person who had that job.

Fifteen goalless draws

What Glinho does is stop goals. In Season 2 he won BRA Division 1 without signing or borrowing a single player, and his record looks like a misprint:

• 5 league goals conceded in 38 matches
• 33 clean sheets
• 15 goalless draws, including his first three games
• 11 of his 19 wins by 1–0
• 2 defeats, both 1–0 at home

Ten clubs scored more than the champions' 33 goals. Cruzeiro still finished on 74 points, three clear of Vasco da Gama.

The title won Cruzeiro a place in continental football, and in Soccerverse Brazil gets only one. Libertaerx complained about this last month. In real life, he pointed out, 13 Brazilian clubs play internationally. "In Soccerverse 1."

Season 3 brought third place in the league. In the continental knockouts Cruzeiro beat Lima Rimac 2–0, then lost 2–0 at home to Columbus. They also reached the national cup final after two penalty shoot-outs, and lost it 5–0 at home to RivaldoGaucho's Flamengo.

Sell big, buy quietly

Glinho only started trading after the title. In January Kaio Pinto Ramos left for Nottingham for 75,000,001 SVC. Two days earlier, jgradi had announced the deal:

I'm the manager of Cruzeiro and i have an agreement wit both the player's agent and Nottingham Forest manager to send Kaio Pinto to the english club

Two days after the sale went through, Youssef Ramalho Chermiti arrived on loan from Nottingham.

Under Glinho, Cruzeiro have spent 76,282,243 SVC on nine players and received 109,885,985 SVC from five sales. That is a surplus of 33.6M, and the Kaio Pinto fee alone nearly covers the spending. Not every deal worked. Paulo Barbosa cost 12.68M and left for 350,000. But Oumar Ngom, bought from Pau for 13.81M in May, went to Edinburgh for 27M in September, a 95.5% profit. And Víctor Yotún Flores, the 80-rated midfielder signed for 13.10M in July, came from Lima Rimac, a side Cruzeiro had played three times in continental competition.

Defence by design

The squad shows the philosophy. Its two highest-rated players are centre-backs: Anderson da Silva (86) and João Messias Ferreira (85). The squad's average tackling rating is 82, against 76 for shooting.

The formation changes but the approach doesn't. Glinho has used four different formations in his last nine matches, most often a 4-5-1. For Wednesday's 1–1 draw with Magni5's Laranjeiras he switched to a Defensive 4-1-2-2-1. Cruzeiro have conceded seven league goals in 19 games this season, the fewest in the division, with 14 clean sheets and seven 0–0s.

The four-day exile

The vote to remove him was proposed on 12 September. Cruzeiro had just lost 3–1 at Flamengo and 1–0 at Salvador, their only league defeats of the season. Three days earlier they had sold Ngom.

Chiesa, who had left his job at Cremona at the end of August, took over on 16 September. Shareholders voted 15,388–0 to give him full control. He won his only match 4–0 against Bragança Paulista, playing a 4-2-3-1 built to counter-attack. By the end of that night he had left.

The job then sat vacant, and over the next night three other managers took it, each lasting between three minutes and four hours. At 13:44 UTC on 20 September, Glinho took it back. He had won the one-name vote with 7,904 votes, and shareholders gave him full control by 8,488–1.

Since returning he has won 6–0 in the cup and 4–0 at Mirassol. There has been one embarrassment: a 1–0 cup exit at Cametá, a third-tier side whose players average a 60 rating.

What makes him tick

Glinho hasn't said. What the record shows: 124 matches, 62 wins, 48 draws and 14 defeats. One club, no shares and hardly a word in public.

Cruzeiro are fourth, seven points behind joint leaders Flamengo and Laranjeiras, and visit São Paulo Green on Saturday. On this evidence, goals will be hard to come by. The question that has followed Glinho since his first 0–0 is whether Cruzeiro can score enough of their own.