Novo Ceni: Exit from São Paulo & Future in Portuguese Football

The São Paulo departure boat has just gained a new member. Goalkeeper Leandro Mathias will not have renewed his contract, which ends at the end of the year, and is free to sign with the club of his choice.

End of the career at Morumbi for the 21-year-old player, who had been training in the professionals since last year, but who never had a concrete chance to make his debut with the tricolor shirt. In total there were 17 related matches. And in all of them he was an option on the reserve bench.

Leandro gained some notoriety in the three years he was part of São Paulo’s under-20 squad and even scored some free kicks, which is why he was soon nicknamed the ‘new Rogério Ceni’, a reference to the eternal idol and one of his many qualities.

Since the middle of the year it was known that the goalkeeper was out of the plans. And any chance of reversing the scenario ended up sabotaged by the sequence he had at Reffis in October, when he was absent for six matches, dealing with pain in his left knee and losing space to even be called up for the archers’ warm-ups and team trips.

Recovered before the club’s final duel of the season, against Vitória, on Sunday (7), he ended up cut. And he has already said goodbye to employees at CT da Barra Funda and fellow cast members.

Leandro’s destiny should be Portuguese football. Clubs from the European country had already approached São Paulo in June, but negotiations involved the player’s loan with Tricolor paying part of his salaries. For this to happen, the contract would need to be renewed. Which didn’t matter.

O FORWARD MY TRICOLOR found that São Paulo even proposed a free and early release to two Portuguese clubs, but none of them accepted the offer to accept the goalkeeper with the Brazilians keeping part of their rights as ‘payment’.

At the beginning of the year, São Paulo and Leandro even announced the renewal of their relationship. But the internal assessment is that the young man did not develop as expected by professionals. And the priority became other revelations from the base for the position, such as Young, Felipe Preis and João Paulo.

In addition to Leandro, another name is officially out of São Paulo: striker Dinenno, whose contract also ran until the end of the year only. The Argentine has already signed a contract with Deportivo Cali, in Colombia, and made a farewell post to fans on social media (see below).

Tricolor has three other athletes whose contracts end at the end of this season: striker Rigoni, midfielder Luiz Gustavo and left-back Enzo Díaz. The latter is on loan from River Plate and should be the only one the club will strive to keep in 2026.