It was difficult for the Gremio fan to contain their enthusiasm when, in December 2025, the Portuguese coach Luis Castro was announced as the new coach of the Porto Alegre emblem for the 2026 season. With good credentials in Brazil, where he had previously placed Botafogo as one of the strongest teams in Latin America, the coach returned to the country where he shone in 2023 surrounded by expectation. Six months after his arrival at the Gaúcho club, however, Castro's life in front of Gremio has not been easy, with poor results putting the club on the verge of relegation. To date, the Portuguese has commanded the new team in 36 games, achieving a balance of 15 wins, 11 draws and 10 defeats. Although he has won the Gaúcho Championship against rival Internacional and kept the club alive in the Copa do Brasil and the Copa Sul-Americana, there is a consensus that unites the press, fans and the coach himself: the work is below expectations. The harshest criticism, however, came from the coach himself. After the 2-1 loss to Palmeiras in April, the Portuguese was questioned about the team's performance in the Brasileirão and responded in a surprisingly direct way. "It's a weak work. By the score, the numbers don't lie, I'm doing a weak work", he admitted, before recognizing that the season would be difficult and would require patience from the fans. Since then, the situation has only worsened. Gremio entered an irregular sequence, accumulated unconvincing performances even when scoring points and arrived at the World Cup break after a 3-1 loss at home against Corinthians on the last Saturday, May 30. The result left the Gauchos in 16th place, just one point above the relegation zone. What worries the Gremio fan most is not just the classification, but also the feeling that, more than six months after the start of the season, the team continues without a clear identity. The criticism has become recurrent in the Porto Alegre press, where analysts point out difficulties in building an offense, defensive oscillations and an inability to transform good moments into competitive consistency. Some journalists, such as Wallace Borges, of TNT Sports, have already declared that Gremio practices "the most annoying football in Brazil". In the last game, the coach heard whistles both during the team's presentation and after the final whistle of the loss to Corinthians. After the game, however, he guaranteed that he does not think of abandoning the project and was supported by the club's management, which bets on taking advantage of the World Cup break to correct problems and recover performance. "I will never give up. In 24 years as a player, I never gave up. In 30 years as a coach, I never gave up. It's a matter of life, a matter of values", he said. The situation becomes even more delicate because Gremio has sought to give the coach experienced and aligned players. At the beginning of the season, the club went to the market to contract players such as Weverton, Juan Nardoni, Tetê - who worked with Castro at Shakhtar Donetsk - and maintained Carlos Vinícius, former Benfica forward who was in great form at the beginning of the season, but lost performance in the last weeks. Despite this, the reinforcements were not enough to transform the team into a candidate for the top places in the table, as many fans imagined at the start of the year after the investment. In the Brasileirão, the situation is worrying, in the cups it is different.