Tomás Kummer was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Abel Bustos's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Racing will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Racing this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Facundo Taborda wants continental football; whether Racing can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ricardo Centurión was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Racing know it.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Racing has been clear about where Leonel Monti stands, which is more than many ever get.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Gabriel Aranda trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Sergio González has written the date down.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Racing will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The words a physio says slowly. 27 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Racing have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Pablo Chavarría was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Racing training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ricardo Centurión is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. José Costa has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Carlos Giménez has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Nobody at Racing will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
34 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Racing lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Racing this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Racing can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Racing this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 38 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Racing is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Racing training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ricardo Centurión is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 87th, and Tristán Suárez spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Gabriel Aranda scored, was marked 7.26, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Racing this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Successful dribbles: 14. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Alvarado defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Pablo Chavarría and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Racing training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ricardo Centurión is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
7.99, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Racing had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad31 Aug 2026
27 new faces, and Racing are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon Abel Bustos will want back
Estudiantes go through and Racing go home, 0‑4 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
It finished 0-4. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Racing this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ricardo Centurión was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ricardo Centurión had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Arsenal were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Racing scored in the 109th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ricardo Centurión provided it, and the 8.09 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Marked 7.82 at 19, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Up for the corner, and Raúl Chamorro delivers — 6.99
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Raúl Chamorro scored, was marked 6.99, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Pablo Chavarría was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Marked 7.01 on 14 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
Successful dribbles: 26. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.72 for the rest of it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ricardo Centurión was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Juan Manuel Colombo is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Lucas Rojas has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Pablo Campos has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Noah Di María has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
In brief
Player ratingsMatías Machado was on a different afternoon to everybody else
Pablo Chavarría and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Still no offer on the table, and Ricardo Centurión’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
27 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Hernán Acosta after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Racing has been clear about where Gonzalo Robles stands, which is more than many ever get.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Almagro defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.