Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Alejandro Medina has, at Deportivo Municipal, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 2 arrived, 5 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Deportivo Municipal had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Sport Huancayo, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
The deal that would have taken Rodrigo Cacho Sousa to Juan Aurich has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Deportivo Municipal with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Deportivo Municipal will try again when the window opens; Melgar may not be selling by then.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Juan Neira was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Deportivo Municipal will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Position 9 on 22 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Juan Aurich waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Deportivo Municipal is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Deportivo Municipal offered $7.1M; Sporting Cristal 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.
6 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.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 7 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
“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 Deportivo Municipal, and it is not being withdrawn.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.83 for the rest of it.
The deal with Sport Huancayo 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.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Dante Silva was one of the reasons people came, and $1.6M does not replace that by itself.
“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 Deportivo Municipal, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo Municipal is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Sport Huancayo keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
4 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Deportivo Municipal can tell you which week it ends in.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Deportivo Municipal have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Deportivo Municipal offered $6.8M; Sporting Cristal 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.
Deportivo Municipal asked and Sporting Cristal said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The deal with Sport Huancayo 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.
Jhon Alvarez 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.
David Ospina damages knee ligaments — 139 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 139 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.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Deportivo Municipal will try again when the window opens; Melgar may not be selling by then.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo Municipal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Jayro Cornejo and Deportivo Municipal agree another 4 years.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
104 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Deportivo Municipal lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Deportivo Municipal will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The first defeat in 8 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Melgar; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo Municipal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Deportivo Municipal can tell you which week it ends in.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo Municipal can pretend not to have heard.
Francisco Galván 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Deportivo Municipal offered $300.0K; UTC 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Eduardo Cabrera was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Deportivo Municipal have made the call to Belgrano. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Deportivo Municipal have made the call to Atlético Mineiro. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Deportivo Municipal have made the call to Independiente Rivadavia. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Francisco Galván will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Deportivo Municipal the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo Municipal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.