Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Patronato waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Nueva Chicago is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nueva Chicago can pretend not to have heard.
20 goals in 19 games at Deportes Recoleta — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Nueva Chicago updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Luciano Jachfe 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Nueva Chicago can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
$120.0K settles it between the clubs for Alan Bonansea
Colón have accepted the money. What Nueva Chicago do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Luciano Jachfe 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Godoy Cruz have kept their man, and Nueva Chicago go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Alan Ruiz was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Alan Ruiz provided it, and the 8.23 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Luciano Jachfe 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 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Matías Bergara 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.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Diego Arroyo 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Nueva Chicago, and both men came out saying it was fine.