It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Juan Dinenno wants continental football; whether Pumas UNAM can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pumas UNAM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Gerardo Serralde is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Add another name to the list: Morelia have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about José Juan Macías. The answer from Pumas UNAM has not changed — yet.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Pedro Vite 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.
Nobody at Pumas UNAM 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.
65 points, and the rest of the division looking up. Every side that finishes first spends the season pretending it is not thinking about it, and this one has started pretending.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Pumas UNAM is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Keylor Navas 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 22 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pedro Vite was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
7 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
The 88th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Robert Morales decided nobody was going anywhere. Queretaro had no time left to answer.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Robert Morales. 1‑0 against Queretaro, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Pumas UNAM, and 2 appearances in 6 say he has earned the hearing.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Miguel Arteaga could afford to be generous.