17 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Tomás Bolzicco had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Defensores were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
“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 The request is on a desk at Chaco For Ever, and it is not being withdrawn.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.12 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Boardroom24 Jul 2028
Deadline passes with 1 signed and 1 gone
That is the business done at Chaco For Ever until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
David Valdez 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.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
7.26, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Chaco For Ever had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
The dugout28 Feb 2028
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Juan Pablo Lucero chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
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 Agustín Zabaleta is on it.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Chaco For Ever lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chaco For Ever can pretend not to have heard.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Fabio Vega was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Spartakos Kitiou can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
The deal with Paralimni is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Spartakos Kitiou 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Egaleo have kept their man, and Spartakos Kitiou go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Spartakos Kitiou are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Ethnikos Achnas waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Spartakos Kitiou is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Nenad Gavrić 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marcel Juszczak 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.
Spartakos Kitiou have made the call to Omonoia. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
In brief
The dugoutNenad Gavrić asks for a word with the manager