Jordi Cortizo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Juan Pablo Domínguez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A 3‑1 win over Santos Laguna, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Leon can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
A performance of 8.21 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings30 Nov 2026
Emi Rodriguez was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.11. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
In brief
Player ratingsJordi Cortizo was on a different afternoon to everybody else
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Leon this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Level with 88 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Leon had all but put away. Guadalajara will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Nicolás Fonseca has come out of that comparison in the side, and Leon have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Pablo Domínguez 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 is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Daniel Arcila wants continental football; whether Leon can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
10 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Andres Pineda to a room that had heard them before.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Leon this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Andres Pineda was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Leon dressing room was either.
Somebody watched every match in the division at the weekend and decided he was the best thing in any of them. A small honour, and most careers end without one.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
Somebody else is better right now than José Alvarado
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Puebla defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Pachuca next, and one man in the Leon dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Diber Cambindo wins it after the whistle should have gone
90 minutes played. Diber Cambindo found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Santos Laguna went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Jordi Cortizo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Juan Pablo Domínguez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Leon can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.