2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Pablo Martínez will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Málaga escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Antonio Rüdiger 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.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Málaga will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Dani Olmo 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.
The first defeat in 5 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Gijón; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
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.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Málaga can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Málaga lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Málaga can pretend not to have heard.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Antonio Rüdiger was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Málaga asked and Mallorca said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Málaga ran out of time with Alcorcón. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
Match12 Feb 2028
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for Málaga. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
4‑0 against AIK, on a night that will be replayed at this club for a generation. Continental reputations are made in single evenings and this was the evening.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Yangel Herrera scored, was marked 7.98, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Real Sociedad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.30. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Real Sociedad.
Player ratings8 Nov 2027
Carlos Soler was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.10. 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.
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
The training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 5 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Real Sociedad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Real Sociedad, and 4 appearances in 18 say he has earned the hearing.
Something was said to Carlos Soler and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Ander Barrenetxea is on it.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Real Sociedad will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Real Sociedad has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes Isaak Davies a promise
The offer from Lugo for Sergio Gómez 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Barcelona have kept their man, and Real Sociedad go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Real Sociedad can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“I did not go to Juventud Torremolinos to sit and watch. I want to come back to Real Sociedad and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Gonçalo Guedes is on it.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Barcelona had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Mikel Oyarzábal 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.
Nobody at Real Sociedad will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
78 points from position 4. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Real Sociedad that is a harder question to answer.
The message was aimed at the stands as much as the dressing room: Ander Barrenetxea plays, and the argument is closed until the manager decides otherwise.
The arithmetic ran out, and everybody could see it coming from a distance. The hard summer starts now, and next season's fixtures will be full of unfamiliar names.
The offer went to Villarreal this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
“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 Real Sociedad, and it is not being withdrawn.
31 games, 1 goals, and a squad option that has arrived without a fee attached. The interesting question at Real Sociedad now is not whether he plays but who he displaces.
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.
5 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.
Real Sociedad have gone to Girona 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Real Sociedad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at Real Sociedad will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Position 4, 78 points, and a run-in that decides whether next season has Thursday nights in it. Nobody is calling it a race yet, which is what people say during one.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Ro Abajas 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Jon Martín 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.
Squad3 May 2027
Words at Huesca training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Salva Ruiz 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.
Yeray 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.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Moi 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.
Leganés next, and one man in the Huesca dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Huesca. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Huesca know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
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.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Carlos Soler trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
62 points from position 4. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.
It had gone 21 games. The players did not celebrate like men who had won a match; they celebrated like men who had been let out of something.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
A brace, and Efe Aghama takes the afternoon — 8.91
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Efe Aghama provided it, and the 8.91 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Jon Martín, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.37
A mark of 8.37 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
“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 Huesca, and it is not being withdrawn.
Julio Alonso 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Huesca and Real Sociedad B, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Jon Martín 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.
14 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Huesca can pretend not to have heard.
Huesca asked and Sport Recife said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jesús Álvarez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Yann Kembo 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Real Sociedad know it.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mikel Oyarzábal signs something — a contract at Real Sociedad or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Mikel Oyarzábal 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.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Real Sociedad can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Real Sociedad has been clear about where Luka Sučić stands, which is more than many ever get.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Gonçalo Guedes signs something — a contract at Real Sociedad or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Real Sociedad, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The message was aimed at the stands as much as the dressing room: Mikel Oyarzábal plays, and the argument is closed until the manager decides otherwise.