Danilo opens up on Flamengo renewal and reveals final dream as a player

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·27 August 2026

Danilo opens up on Flamengo renewal and reveals final dream as a player

Defender Danilo gave a press conference this Thursday (27)

With his contract running until the end of the year, Danilo’s future is still uncertain. However, the center back explained how talks over a contract renewal with Flamengo are going and revealed that the outlook is optimistic. Wearing the number 13 shirt, he said both sides want to extend the deal through 2027 and, in the player’s view, it is only a matter of time before the contract is signed.

— In my 2026, I had little time to reflect and analyze, especially because there was a World Cup in the middle of it. At 35 years old, I had to dedicate myself a lot to perform and be well prepared. Now I’ve had the chance to think more clearly about it. Flamengo and I are talking, and I hope that in 2027 we can still be together and that I can make it the last year of my career — said Danilo at the press conference.

— We’re talking very calmly, and both sides want to make one more beautiful year happen, so that I can say it will be the last year of my career. I’m going to finish at the club of my heart, a project I believed in and that has been working. There are no obstacles for it not to happen (the renewal), and for us to be together in 2027. God willing, maybe win an important trophy, which would be wonderful — he added.

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Despite limited playing time this season, Danilo is seen as an essential figure in Flamengo’s dressing room. Acting as a kind of ‘captain without the armband,’ the number 13 usually steps up in moments of greatest need when something is not going well internally.

Besides the renewal, Danilo addressed other topics during the press conference, such as the Libertadores, the Brasileirão, and Sunday’s match (29) against Botafogo. Check out below the other answers from the ‘hero of the Libertadores fourth title’ this Thursday (27).

WHAT ELSE DID DANILO SAY?

Match against Botafogo

“Confidence is high for the match, mainly because of the preparation we’ve been doing and the work we develop every day. This week, since there’s no match, we’ve been able to prepare well.”

Missed chances against Cruzeiro

“That’s a slightly more superficial assessment I can make. We are all fully aware that we should have made better use of our chances, and the match would then have gone in a different direction. That is clear. All of us players are aware of that and, more than that, we have the desire and determination to improve and change it.”

“Obviously, in a match like that, in a slightly deeper analysis, if you start failing to convert the chances you have and to keep the ball a bit more in the opponent’s half, being a bit more mature in that sense. But we’ve already worked that way in other matches, and we are aware that we need to improve in that aspect.”

“But always pointing out that (Flamengo) has the best attack in the competition, it is a team that scores many goals, so I think it was an episode that happened in these last two matches against Cruzeiro that we have to move past and go back to being decisive, as we will be.”

Libertadores and Del Valle

“We really know how difficult it is to face this opponent, because the Libertadores is much more than just football. There is all the logistics, travel, altitude, differences in refereeing culture—in short, there are many things that make a Libertadores match a different kind of match. However, we already know our opponent is a difficult one, just as any other would be. This season, as in others, there are always many matches, so we always think about the opponent ahead of us, which is Botafogo. Soon enough, we’ll have time to prepare for the Libertadores knockout tie, which will also be great and very hard-fought.”

Days off

“It really is a luxury, I can say it’s a luxury, with so many matches and especially so much travel. That makes the logistics of training times, rest times, and managing to balance all that much more difficult. So being able to have two days in which you can let the squad, in a way, reset some of the stress—whether physical or mental—is huge. Without of course wanting to undervalue other professions and other kinds of work, but when you work with your body and physically, it is often necessary to have that moment of pause. So that you can reset some of the issues that build up during the year and then get back to working well, with fresh legs and a mind fully focused on what lies ahead.”

Reports about the squad’s dissatisfaction with Leonardo Jardim

“I think this dynamic, especially this year’s dynamic—it’s my second year at Flamengo, so I’m more used to everything that happens—has been a very interesting one. Because, as you said, many times it’s not even that information leaks; it’s often information that is simply made up, because from inside there is no such disagreement. Obviously, there are the natural clashes between high-level coaches and players, who always have ideas and thoughts geared toward winning and improving the work. But obviously this kind of information never comes out when, for example, Flamengo win 5-1 against Mirassol or when Flamengo play a great match against Cruzeiro.” “So I think that many times these are stories that come out in order to, in a way, try to destabilize the environment. But we have built a very cohesive group, a very balanced group, that has, in a way, remained clear-headed and not allowed this information, which is often created from the outside, to disturb the working environment here inside. And that has been very rewarding because it is day-to-day work that we do here, that we try to stitch together, in a way, and it has been producing results.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.