“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 The request is on a desk at San Telmo, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Antofagasta for Nicolás Baigorria 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.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Sportivo Italiano paid $61.0K and San Telmo took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
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.
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 will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Central Córdoba SdE have kept their man, and Villa Dálmine go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The fee is $29.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. San Telmo drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Almirante Brown will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Román Vocos has pre-agreed a move to Villa Dálmine, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
9 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.
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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Brandon Gómez 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Villa Dálmine has been clear about where Guillermo Friedrich stands, which is more than many ever get.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager has not finished forgetting Luciano Brandán's mistake
The dugoutTomás Ponzo asks for a word with the manager
A season's verdict on Mateo Solís: the best of his age
Villa Dálmine have a 21-year-old the division has just voted its finest young footballer. The club's next problem is that everybody else now knows it too.
Villa Dálmine and San Telmo have settled on $29.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Lauro Gamba 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.
Villa Dálmine have gone to San Telmo with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Gabriel Leiva has, at Villa Dálmine, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Walter Molina was the name on every phone-in, and the club has gone and signed him for $390.0K. For one week the board can do no wrong, which is a week most boards never get.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Juan Cruz Zurbriggen 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Iván Castillo has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. José Romano has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Benjamín Luna has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at San Telmo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leonel Pollacchi 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.
16 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.