28 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Alianza Lima lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Luis Ramos 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pablo Ceppelini was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Alianza Lima 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.
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Alianza Lima lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Alianza Lima training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pedro Aquino 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.
Luis Ramos 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.
54 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Alianza Lima lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
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.
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.
143 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Alianza Lima 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 Alianza Lima can pretend not to have heard.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Federico Girotti wants continental football; whether Alianza Lima can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
At 21 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pedro Aquino was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Gianfranco Castellanos 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.
In brief
The dugoutGaspar Gentile has become a man the manager trusts
Two goals and a mark of 8.55 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Alianza Lima training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pedro Aquino 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.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Horacio Farfan, on a 2‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.