Marked for Gabriel Compagnucci
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Dec 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 109 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.
Boardroom21 Dec 2026
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 dugout21 Dec 2026
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Atlético Tucumán have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Boardroom21 Dec 2026
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Juan González has agreed terms with Real Pilar for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Market21 Dec 2026
Juan González has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Atlético Tucumán they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Leandro Díaz in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atlético Tucumán this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Alex Teves is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Kevin Ortiz falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Transfer targets21 Dec 2026
Atlético Tucumán have made the call to River Plate. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Nov 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 131 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.
Market30 Nov 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Atlético Tucumán can pretend not to have heard.
Market30 Nov 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Atlético Tucumán is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Leandro Díaz 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Gianluca Ferrari falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Atlético Tucumán, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
Manuel Brondo has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Atlético Tucumán 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.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Luciano Vallejo has seen what the next man earns
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Atlético Tucumán that is a harder question to answer.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad26 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alexis Canelo
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Atlético Tucumán lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Leandro Díaz in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atlético Tucumán this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Gianluca Ferrari falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Marked 8.16 — 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
16 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.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Bautista Martínez on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Gabriel Compagnucci
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Juan Rodríguez
“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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market7 Sep 2026
The offer from Albacete for Mauro Carrizo 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Atlético Tucumán they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Leonel Di Plácido 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kevin Ortiz was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
“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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Martín Benítez slips down the pecking order
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Martín Benítez is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Leandro Díaz
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Leandro Díaz has come out of that comparison in the side, and Atlético Tucumán have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Atlético Tucumán, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
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.