Jerónimo Russo 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Ignacio Ramírez is on it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marcelo Esponda 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.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Newell's Old Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Newell's Old Boys, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Newell's Old 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 Newell's Old 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.
Nobody at Newell's Old Boys 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Newell's Old Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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 Newell's Old Boys that is a harder question to answer.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. David Sotelo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Newell's Old Boys the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Nobody at Newell's Old Boys 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.
Nothing is announced when this happens and everybody knows. He is a bigger part of the plan at Newell's Old Boys than he was a month ago, and the training ground worked that out before the team sheet said so.
It will be explained as a change for the team and it may even be one. Nobody who has worn one believes that, and neither does the man who has just had it taken away.
Gimnasia y Esgrima next, and one man in the Newell's Old Boys dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Valentino Acuña is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ciro Thompson will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Newell's Old Boys the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Marcelo Esponda 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Walter Mazzantti is on it.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Oscar Salomón’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Newell's Old Boys needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Newell's Old Boys know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Oscar Salomón trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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.
0‑1 against Fluminense, and an evening that measured the gap rather than the ninety minutes. Nothing about it was a disgrace and nothing about it was close.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Facundo Basualdo will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Newell's Old Boys the goodbyes have quietly begun.
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.
Nobody at Newell's Old Boys 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.
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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Newell's Old Boys is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Walter Mazzantti 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Newell's Old Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager has not finished forgetting Franco Escobar's mistake