The words a physio says slowly. 48 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Defensa y Justicia will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
The words a physio says slowly. 101 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.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.66 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 6 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
116 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Defensa y Justicia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.39 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
6 goals in one match, Daniel Ribera on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Defensa y Justicia and Talleres.
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.
Aarón Molinas 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Valentín Weinzettel has just signed for Defensa y Justicia, and for once the answer mattered.
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Defensa y Justicia have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Aarón Molinas 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Defensa y Justicia have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.39 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Juan Manuel Gutiérrez and Defensa y Justicia agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Aarón Molinas 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.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.30 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
David Fernández 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.
Nobody at Defensa y Justicia 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Tomás Zicovich provided it, and the 8.61 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Damián Fernández 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.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
0‑1, and a season that ran to May has ended inside a fortnight. This is what a playoff is: nine months of work settled by a couple of evenings, and nobody who designed it was thinking about the losing dressing room.
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Defensa y Justicia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
A 1‑0 win over Ferro Carril Oeste, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 22 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.08 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
David Fernández 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 18 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.15 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Aarón Molinas 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 8.03 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
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.
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Defensa y Justicia lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Defensa y Justicia can pretend not to have heard.
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Defensa y Justicia has to find a result from somewhere.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
23 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
22 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 19 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Damián Fernández 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Blas Benedetto wants continental football; whether Defensa y Justicia can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
25 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it 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 Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
23 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
8.87. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Santiago Toloza. 2‑0 against Deportivo Riestra, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.79 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Aarón Molinas 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.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Ignacio Chicco knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Damián Fernández and Defensa y Justicia agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
28 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Aarón Molinas 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.
Aarón Molinas 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 general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
1‑5 to Independiente, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
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 7.98 for the rest of it.
Aarón Molinas 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.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Defensa y Justicia and Independiente in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
The name of Sebastián Cabrera has come up in conversations Defensa y Justicia were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
259 appearances across 13 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Defensa y Justicia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
1‑2 to Unión de Santa Fe, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings1 May 2034
Dylan Almada was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.98. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Two goals and a mark of 8.30 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Defensa y Justicia can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Defensa y Justicia have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Aarón Molinas 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 8 goals between Defensa y Justicia and Godoy Cruz, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.50, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings17 Apr 2034
Santiago Toloza was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.46. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.14 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Aarón Molinas 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.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Facundo Nazer and Defensa y Justicia agree another 3 years.
Two goals and a mark of 9.23 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Aarón Molinas 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 9.30 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tomás Escalante 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 goal that put Platense ahead was still being replayed on the concourse when Defensa y Justicia equalised, 4 minutes later. Leads are only worth what you do with them.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Patricio Flores wants continental football; whether Defensa y Justicia can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.