“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo Riestra can pretend not to have heard.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Deportivo Riestra, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo Riestra is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Jonathan Herrera will call it something else in private.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo Riestra can pretend not to have heard.
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Deportivo Riestra has to find a result from somewhere.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo Riestra is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Deportivo Riestra pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo Riestra is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo Riestra can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo Riestra is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The name of Nicolás Sansotre has come up in conversations Deportivo Riestra were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Deportivo Riestra have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Deportivo Riestra they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo Riestra can pretend not to have heard.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo Riestra can pretend not to have heard.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo Riestra is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The captaincy has been taken off Ignacio Arce. Deportivo Riestra will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
It is a strip of cloth and it decides nothing on a Saturday. It still tells the dressing room exactly whose opinion the manager values, which is the whole point of it.
14 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Deportivo Riestra has to find a result from somewhere.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.