There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Godoy Cruz scored in the 93th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Godoy Cruz can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Godoy Cruz they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Godoy Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
In brief
SquadKevin Garay falls out with a teammate over standards
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Godoy Cruz will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Godoy Cruz they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad25 Feb 2036
Kevin Garay 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Godoy Cruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Godoy Cruz are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Something was said to Valentino Ahumada and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Independiente Rivadavia next, and one man in the Godoy Cruz dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kevin Rivas trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Godoy Cruz they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Nicolás Borsotti 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.
1 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Godoy Cruz could ask drops and the wages Daniel Herrera can ask rise.
A new face in his position, and Daniel Herrera suddenly has to win back what he thought he owned. Godoy Cruz have promised nothing — clubs rarely do at this stage.
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.
In brief
The dugoutDavid Useche knocks on the manager’s door
20 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Godoy Cruz lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
1‑3, and Estudiantes go on. Nine months of work settled by a couple of evenings, which is what a playoff is and what nobody designing one thinks about.
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Lautaro Navarro will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Godoy Cruz the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“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 Godoy Cruz, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer went to Talleres 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.
$810.0K on the table at Dock Sud. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
3‑0, and Bruno Cabrera took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Deportivo Cali tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings19 Jun 2034
A brace, and Bruno Cabrera takes the afternoon — 8.81
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Bruno Cabrera provided it, and the 8.81 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.99 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
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.
Agustín Méndez 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 Juergen Elitím was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Botafogo have kept their man, and Deportivo Cali go back to a list with one name crossed off it.