The words a physio says slowly. 97 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.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Claudio Campostrini was one of the reasons people came, and $1.6M does not replace that by itself.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and All Boys have had the benefit of it.
Iván Zafarana 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nicolás Barrientos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The words a physio says slowly. 141 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at All Boys training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nicolás Barrientos 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at All Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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 Felipe Coronel has written the date down.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at All Boys training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Axel Abet 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.
“I watch every All Boys game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Schwarz-Weiß Bregenz runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Nicolás Carrizo has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Iván Zafarana has moved up it.
Two goals and a mark of 8.71 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.81 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at All Boys is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Agustín Cano is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at All Boys training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nicolás Barrientos 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.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for All Boys is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Ulises Delgado has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.85 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
1 for Gabriel Ramírez, marked 7.77, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at All Boys is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys 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 Axel Abet was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 2‑3 defeat, delivered by Ezequiel Cabrera to a room that had heard them before.
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.
Nicolás Carrizo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nicolás Barrientos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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.
Arsenal next, and one man in the All Boys dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
The offer from Rustavi for Tiago Pucciarelli was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Nicolás Carrizo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nicolás Barrientos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Lucas Cano is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at All Boys, another week without a signature from Nicolás Carrizo.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at All Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Ricardo Blanco’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and All Boys needing him to play as if none of it matters.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.02 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around All Boys they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys 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.
“I did not go to Schwarz-Weiß Bregenz to sit and watch. I want to come back to All Boys and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 0 matches say the rest.
The offer from Qingdao Hainiu for Lucas Cano was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Thiago Calone wants continental football; whether All Boys 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 Axel Abet was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The phone has started ringing about Lucas Cano again, and this time the name on the line is Qingdao Hainiu. All Boys are listening politely and promising nothing.
Nicolás Carrizo 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Gustavo Turraca wants continental football; whether All Boys 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 Nicolás Barrientos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
36 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.