The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Nacional people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The deal with Libertad 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.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Nacional is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Nacional can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Santiago Rojas 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.
$85.0K was the most the club would pay and Libertad were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Squad20 Dec 2027
Diego Duarte 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.
Nobody at Nacional 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.
Done, and with games to spare. Next season has floodlit nights against clubs from other countries in it, and the accounts have a line they did not have last year.
0‑2 away to the standard of Vasco da Gama. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Sol de America waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Nacional is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“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 The request is on a desk at Nacional, and it is not being withdrawn.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Nacional will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Nacional they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Nacional can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Alfredo Martínez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Nacional has been clear about where Dylan Vera stands, which is more than many ever get.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Nacional will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Santiago Rojas wants continental football; whether Nacional can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
The offer from Bnei Yehuda for Hernán Domínguez was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Silvio Torales 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Fabrizio Jara trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
He used to be one of the options. He is now one of the men the options are picked around, and the change happened quietly enough that only the dressing room noticed on the day.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Nacional has been clear about where Joel Figueredo stands, which is more than many ever get.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Guarani in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.