Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Rafa Romero will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sevilla Atlético the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Fábio Cardoso 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.
Nobody at Sevilla Atlético 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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Valentino Fattore’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Sevilla Atlético needing him to play as if none of it matters.
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sevilla Atlético lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sevilla Atlético this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Israel Domínguez is on it.
Fábio Cardoso 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 had been thinking. Iker Muñoz 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Alberto Collado is on it.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Sevilla Atlético would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Sevilla Atlético has to find a result from somewhere.
4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Miguel Sierra 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 supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Nobody at Sevilla Atlético 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.
Something was said to Răzvan Jălade and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 7 goals between Sevilla Atlético and Juventud Torremolinos, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Israel Domínguez and Sevilla Atlético agree another 4 years.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Alberto Collado 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.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Pablo Rivera was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.33. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
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.
Juanca 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Aston Silva has his answer from Sevilla Atlético; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sevilla Atlético know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Ibra Sow, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.83
A mark of 7.83 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Juanca 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.
Iker Muñoz 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 terraces5 Oct 2026
A long trip to another club worth making
2-0, and a corner of somebody else's ground that made more noise than the rest of it put together. Those coaches leave before dawn and nobody outside them ever mentions it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lulo 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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Lorenzo Luchino is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Roberto Parra could afford to be generous.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lulo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Rafa Romero 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.
“Nobody outside is coming to save us.” It was short, it was not comfortable, and by all accounts the Sevilla Atlético squad were quieter afterwards than they had been all season.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sevilla Atlético, another week without a signature from Oso.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.