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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 15 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.82 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Mario Gaspar 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at CE Europa can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
He is 20 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Adnane Ghailan was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tenerife this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I watch every Tenerife game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at CE Europa runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
A mark of 7.73, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
The dugout23 Nov 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.” Francisco Hernández, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Nobody at Tenerife 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.
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.
In brief
Loan watchThe goals keep arriving from Hugo Weckmann’s exile
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; CE Europa are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
At 35, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at CE Europa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hugo Zarco 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.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 89th, and Mérida spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
At 22 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.
Iván Chapela 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.
“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 Tenerife, 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 2‑1, Francisco Hernández could afford to be generous.
CE Europa asked and Castellón said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Álex Cano 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.
CE Europa have made the call to Deportivo La Coruña. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Dani Fernández is in the works
SquadWords at CE Europa training over how hard people work