It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Elche this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Miguel Atienza was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Three points for Elche, 2‑0 the final word against Gijón in a contest settled by the finer margins.
Player ratings10 Apr 2028
Martim Neto was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.51. 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.
Player ratings10 Apr 2028
Germán Valera was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.24. 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.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Elche pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
104 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Elche lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Elche can pretend not to have heard.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.79, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad11 Oct 2027
Germán Valera 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.
52 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Elche lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Position 18 and 27 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Elche have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Thomas Lemar 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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Elche. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
41 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Elche lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Thomas Lemar was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Elche will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Andrés González was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Elche dressing room was either.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.