“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 The request is on a desk at Belgrano, and it is not being withdrawn.
25 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Belgrano this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
4 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad3 Jul 2028
Words at Belgrano training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Santiago Longo 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.
Two goals and a mark of 9.43 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Belgrano can pretend not to have heard.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.49 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
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.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.09 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
11 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 107 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Chacarita Juniors scored in the 91th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
“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 Chacarita Juniors, and it is not being withdrawn.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Franco Pulian did not need any: 7.60, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Julián Velázquez 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Brian Calderara 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Franco Pulian has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Chacarita Juniors has to find a result from somewhere.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chacarita Juniors this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Unión de Santa Fe paid $460.0K and Chacarita Juniors took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Favio Cabral 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.
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.
In brief
Player ratingsMario Sanabria was on a different afternoon to everybody else
The words a physio says slowly. 21 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Chacarita Juniors can pretend not to have heard.
Julián Velázquez 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.
Squad24 May 2027
Favio Cabral 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.