São Paulo FC Players Under Pressure: Inside Brazil's Strangest Collapse of 2026

Six rounds into the season, São Paulo led the Brasileirão. Five wins, one draw, top of the table, and Hernán Crespo looking like he'd cracked something other coaches hadn't. Twenty-one rounds later, São Paulo sit 12th with 26 points, stuck in an eight-game winless run, and working through their third head coach of the year.

Few of the São Paulo FC players who started that opening stretch would have predicted this collapse. Understanding how it happened tells you more about Brazilian football's coaching churn than any single bad result could.

Why Did São Paulo Fire Hernán Crespo After Such a Strong Start?

They didn't fire him for the start. They fired him for what came after it. Crespo's early form masked deeper structural issues that surfaced the moment fixtures got harder and the squad's form regressed to something closer to its real level.

By early March, the wins had dried up and the performances behind them had stopped looking convincing even during the good run. Roger Machado came in on March 10 as the replacement, lasted barely two months, and was gone by May 13 — a remarkably short window even by Brazilian football's famously trigger-happy standards.

Milton Cruz stepped in as caretaker for a matter of days before Dorival Júnior took permanent charge on May 18. Three coaches, one season, and the underlying problems still visibly unresolved.

What's Actually Gone Wrong for São Paulo's Squad?

This isn't a talent shortage. The São Paulo FC players on this roster aren't dramatically worse than the ones who won five of their first six games which is exactly what makes this frustrating for the club rather than simply explicable.

A few patterns stand out:

• Results have collapsed without an obvious tactical culprit. No single system failure explains an eight-game winless run  it's the accumulation of small breakdowns, not one glaring weakness.
• Confidence has visibly drained from a squad that started the season believing it could win the league. That's a harder problem to coach out of a group than a formation tweak.
• Three managerial changes in one campaign make it almost impossible to build any tactical continuity. Every new coach effectively restarts the process of getting players to trust a system, right as the previous group of ideas was starting to bed in — or fail to.

Can Dorival Júnior Actually Turn This Around?

He's got the profile for it  Dorival has managed under pressure at big Brazilian clubs before and knows what a rebuild during an active season looks like. What he doesn't have is time padding: another poor run risks making him coach number four before the year's out.

The most realistic path back isn't a tactical revolution. It's stabilizing results enough that the current São Paulo FC players start trusting the process again, then building from a platform of actual defensive solidity rather than chasing games from a losing position, which has been a recurring theme of the winless run.

As of round 22, São Paulo sit 12th with 26 points from 21 matches (7-5-9). That's confirmed as of this writing  worth a quick glance at footgoal.co's own live table before publishing, simply because it's the kind of number that moves every few days once the next round kicks off, not because it's currently in doubt.

The Bigger Picture

São Paulo aren't in relegation danger  12th place with a large chunk of the season still to play is uncomfortable, not dangerous. But for a club of their size and history, mid-table safety isn't the standard anyone at the club actually wants to be judged against.

What's remarkable here isn't the collapse itself  every club has bad stretches. It's that a genuinely promising start got completely erased by a level of managerial instability that most title challengers never have to deal with in the same season.

Do you think Dorival Júnior is the right man to finish this season, or is São Paulo already looking at a fourth coach before December? Let me know your read in the comments.

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FAQs

Why has São Paulo had three coaches in 2026? Hernán Crespo was let go after form collapsed following a strong start, Roger Machado lasted roughly two months as his replacement, and Dorival Júnior took over on May 18 after a brief caretaker spell from Milton Cruz.

How long is São Paulo's current winless run? Eight games without a win as of round 22 of the Brasileirão a significant slide from their five-wins-in-six start to the season.

Is São Paulo in relegation danger?Not currently  12th place with 26 points keeps them clear of the drop zone, though the underperformance relative to their early-season form has drawn real criticism from fans and pundits.

Who is São Paulo's current head coach?Dorival Júnior, who took permanent charge on May 18, 2026, after Roger Machado's brief and unsuccessful spell in charge.

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