Marked for Facundo Ardiles
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Apr 2027
Rodrigo Melo 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.
Market12 Apr 2027
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Alejandro Melo wants continental football; whether Estudiantes can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Delfor Minervino 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.
Squad12 Apr 2027
The manager makes an example of Facundo Vila
“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.
Loan watch12 Apr 2027
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Estudiantes, and 5 appearances in 15 say he has earned the hearing.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match20 Mar 2027
0‑3 to Central Norte, 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.
Squad22 Mar 2027
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Rodrigo Melo 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 Estudiantes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Estudiantes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Delfor Minervino 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.
Squad22 Mar 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Boardroom22 Mar 2027
Nobody left the Estudiantes dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Dec 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 Estudiantes can pretend not to have heard.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Rodrigo Melo 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 Estudiantes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Estudiantes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Delfor Minervino 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.
Boardroom28 Dec 2026
111% of the income goes out in wages at Estudiantes
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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad28 Dec 2026
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ezequiel Almirón trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Oct 2026
A fracture rules Benjamín Pérez out for 51 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Estudiantes will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Rodrigo Melo 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 Estudiantes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Franco Quinteros 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market17 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Estudiantes have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Market17 Aug 2026
Granada come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Estudiantes did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Rodrigo Melo 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.
Market17 Aug 2026
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Estudiantes will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Match15 Aug 2026
Colón left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Estudiantes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Enzo Acosta 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
8 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.