5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
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.
Matías Rodríguez 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.
16 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Astana will make the call about Benjamín González this week. All Boys have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at All Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
River Plate go through and All Boys go home, 0‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
0-3, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
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 All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. IBV moved on, Agustín Fernández reports back to All Boys, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at All Boys training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ricardo Blanco 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 All 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.
The name of Tiago Pucciarelli has come up in conversations All Boys were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 16 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.