Welcome to The Big Green

Most Palmeiras coverage that reaches an English-speaking reader is a scoreline and two sentences from a wire service. By the time it lands, ninety minutes have been flattened into a result.

That is what this blog is for.

The Big Green is a place to read about Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras in English, written by someone who actually sat through the match. The name is a translation of Verdão, one of the nicknames supporters use for the club.

What goes up here

Match reports are the backbone: what happened, why it happened, and what it was worth, with ratings for everyone who got on the pitch.

Previews go up ahead of the fixtures that matter — what is at stake, who is available, what to watch for.

Analysis turns up when something needs more room than a report can give it: a change in shape, a run of form, a player earning or losing their place.

All of it covers the men’s first team, across the Brasileirão (Brazil’s top division), the Copa do Brasil (the domestic cup), the Libertadores (South America’s equivalent of the Champions League) and the Paulistão (the São Paulo state championship).

How the ratings work

Every match report ends with ratings out of 10, down to a decimal point.

A 6 means you did your job. A 7 is good, an 8 very good, a 9 outstanding. A 10 is for the kind of performance people still bring up years later, so it will not appear often. Going the other way, a 5 is below par, a 4 is poor, and anything at 3 or under was a disaster.

Substitutes who play fewer than 15 minutes are not rated. They get an N/A, because a quarter of an hour is not enough to judge anyone on.

Man of the match is a pick, not a calculation. It will not always be the player who scored.

What you will not find

Nothing here is invented. When something is not known, the post says so instead of filling the hole with a plausible guess.

The numbers come from what was watched and written down, not from scraping a stats site. Quotes appear only when someone actually said the words, with a link to where they said them.

No transfer rumors dressed up as reporting. No headline the article underneath cannot pay for.

Why some words stay in Portuguese

Some things do not survive translation, so they are left alone and explained instead.

Verdão and Alviverde — “big green” and “green and white” — are what supporters call the club. Porco, “pig,” began as an insult from rival fans and was adopted as a mascot out of spite. The Dérbi is Palmeiras against Corinthians. The Choque-Rei is Palmeiras against São Paulo.

Each one gets a short explanation the first time it appears in a post, and the glossary keeps them in one place.

Fair warning

The ratings are one person’s opinion, argued honestly. You will disagree with some of them, probably loudly.

That is most of the fun of reading them.