On May 26, 2026, Santos FC met Deportivo Cuenca on the final matchday of Copa Sudamericana Group D with Neymar sidelined by muscular discomfort and Santos needing a win to reach the playoffs.
Santos went into the fixture with four points and sitting last in the group; the club had no margin for error. A victory over Deportivo Cuenca was the clear, stated requirement for Santos to stay in the tournament, while San Lorenzo led the section with seven points and Deportivo Recoleta had five. Under the scenarios laid out before kickoff, Santos would advance as the group’s second team only if it won and San Lorenzo either won or drew against Deportivo Recoleta.
Deportivo Cuenca had its own incentives. A win for the Ecuadorian side could lift it straight through to the round of 16 if San Lorenzo and Recoleta finished level, and even a draw would be enough to send Cuenca through only if Recoleta failed to win in Argentina. Pre-match coverage framed the night as binary: Santos must win to extend its hopes, while Cuenca could clinch direct passage to the octavos de final with the right result alongside a draw in the other game.
Local outlets made Neymar’s absence the defining subplot. One report warned that Santos, without the injured Neymar, effectively had no alternative but to beat Deportivo Cuenca to secure a playoff berth, and another highlighted that Neymar’s muscular discomfort left him unavailable and that Santos urgently needed the three points to keep realistic chances of advancing. The same coverage underlined that Santos would benefit if San Lorenzo either drew or won its match in Paraguay—meaning the Brazilian side’s fate depended almost as much on a result elsewhere as on its own performance.
The math creates the evening’s tension. Santos must produce a win under pressure while missing its most prominent attacking figure; at the same time the team must watch the scoreboard in a different stadium. Deportivo Cuenca, by contrast, could advance directly with a victory plus a draw in the San Lorenzo–Recoleta game, a simple sequence that would hand the Ecuadorian side top spot and an immediate ticket to the round of 16 without the playoff detour.
Those contradictions matter beyond lines on a table. A Santos victory would not guarantee progression unless the combination of results in the other fixture fell the right way, and a single goal in either game could flip which club goes through. The narrowness of the path leaves Santos dependent on both its ability to replace Neymar on the field and on outcomes it cannot control off it.
The clearest question coming out of Matchday 6 is this: can Santos win without Neymar and do so while also getting the result it needs from San Lorenzo’s game? The answer will determine whether Santos still has a shot at the Sudamericana playoffs or whether Deportivo Cuenca—by taking care of its own business—advances to the octavos de final.
