“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Santa Cruz have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
One scored and one made, which is a different afternoon from scoring twice and an easier one to overlook. Marked 6.42, and involved in 2 of his side's goals.
Robinho 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.
At 19 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.
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 will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
52 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lanús lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Lanús have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lanús this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Renzo Uriburu has just signed for Santa Cruz, and for once the answer mattered.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Santa Cruz pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Santa 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 Lautaro Garzón and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Words at Santa Cruz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Galhardo 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.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Marcos Viana after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Renato trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 33 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.10 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Santa Cruz had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Danubio, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Alex Ribeiro is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
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.
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The name of Mariano Troilo has come up in conversations Parma were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nahuel Estévez 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.
Position 20 and 24 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Palermo have kept their man, and Parma go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Parma hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
The name of Nahuel Estévez has come up in conversations Parma were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Lautaro Valenti wants continental football; whether Parma can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Parma hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Christian Ordoñez wants continental football; whether Parma can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
The name of Mandela Keita has come up in conversations Parma were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. AC Milan have kept their man, and Parma go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Mandela Keita is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Thomás De Martis 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 pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Diego Carlos, and the manager let it.
Squad7 Jun 2027
Nesta Elphege 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.
Thomás De Martis 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Parma, and both men came out saying it was fine.
0 appearances and 0 clean sheets. A goalkeeper learns his job by playing it, and a season that gave him neither the games nor the shut-outs is a year taken off the front of a career.
The name of Emanuele Valeri keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Parma say nothing, which says plenty.
The dugout31 May 2027
Luca Scarlato is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The words a physio says slowly. 49 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 bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nesta Elphege 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.
The dugout26 Apr 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Mauro Sorrentino chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon Luca Scarlato will want back
56 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Parma lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.74 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 Parma, and it is not being withdrawn.
He is 23 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 93 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.
7.95, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Giovanni Fabbian 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Thomás De Martis is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“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.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Giulio Peretti kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Nahuel Estévez
7 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.
7 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Parma can tell you which week it ends in.
At 18 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.
The ambition story running backwards, and the one nobody tells: a footballer who wants a smaller ground, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is rarely reported as anything else.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nesta Elphege 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.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Parma have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Christian Ordoñez wants continental football; whether Parma can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
“I watch every Parma game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Sassuolo runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Giulio Peretti left the room before anybody could ask which.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Giulio Peretti to a room that had heard them before.
Thomás De Martis 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 team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
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 Mariano Troilo is on it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Atalanta in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Parma this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Parma know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Monza in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Nesta Elphege has written the date down.
The shrug has gone, the language is coming, and he now argues in training like somebody who expects to be here next year. Half a signing's value is this and none of it appears on a fee.
Parma offered $19.9M; Atalanta 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.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Parma this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Como in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Simone Russini has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Nesta Elphege signs something — a contract at Parma or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.