Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Guillermo Maripán was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Gabriel Mercado 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Alerrandro’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Internacional needing him to play as if none of it matters.
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 Matheus Cunha trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Internacional. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The words a physio says slowly. 80 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Successful dribbles: 26. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CS Constantine have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Messala Merbah was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CS Constantine this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
At 20 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.
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.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
“I watch every Internacional game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at CS Constantine runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“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.
Nobody at Internacional 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.
135 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. CS Constantine lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 20 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at CS Constantine until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Kauan 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at CS Constantine training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Messala Merbah 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. CSKA Moscow have kept their man, and CS Constantine go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
CS Constantine ran out of time with Paradou. The paperwork was open when the deadline passed, and a transfer that was almost done is now a transfer that never happened.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. CS Constantine will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
The plan went upstairs and came back down. Nothing about that will make a headline anywhere else, and everybody who works at the training ground will remember it for years.
CS Constantine spent the window trying to move Brahim Dib on and nobody came. He trains with a squad that has already told him he is not part of it, and both sides now wait for the next one.
The words a physio says slowly. 143 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CS Constantine can pretend not to have heard.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ibrahim Hachoud has just signed for CS Constantine, and for once the answer mattered.
The deal with Santos is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
CS Constantine asked and Paradou said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
CS Constantine offered $52.0K; JS Kabylie said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
A new face in his position, and Messala Merbah suddenly has to win back what he thought he owned. CS Constantine have promised nothing — clubs rarely do at this stage.
The deal with Internacional is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
CS Constantine asked and MC Oran said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
3 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Haras El Hodoud waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Internacional is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
5 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.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Alexandro Bernabei 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Internacional training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guillermo Maripán 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.
“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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Alexandro Bernabei and Internacional agree another 4 years.
Thiago Maia 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. Guilherme Cunha 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.