“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 The request is on a desk at Cartagena, and it is not being withdrawn.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Sporting CP have kept their man, and Cartagena go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Roony Bardghji 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Words at Cartagena training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Javi Guerra 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.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Juan Iglesias has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Pedro Álvaro trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cartagena lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 The request is on a desk at Cartagena, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Cartagena have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Javi Guerra 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.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 38 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Cartagena is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Yago Santiago signs something — a contract at Cartagena or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A season-long audition: Tarazona still own him, but the shirt and the minutes are Cartagena's to give. A loan is a bet both clubs believe they are winning.
“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 Cartagena, and it is not being withdrawn.
Zamora paid $1.7M and Cartagena took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Juan Iglesias 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.
Deportivo La Coruña paid $480.0K and Cartagena 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Aridane Hernández was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout14 Jun 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Juan Iglesias's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Benito was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Pedro Álvaro.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.