Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Las Palmas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad16 Oct 2028
Words at Las Palmas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Viti Rozada 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.
Edu Altozano 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.
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 Enrique Clemente is on it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Real Madrid Castilla in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Las Palmas are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
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 Nicholas Opoku has written the date down.
Ale García 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jesé trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The offer went to CE Europa this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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 Sanluqueño this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
$65.0K was the most the club would pay and Arenas Club were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 36 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Sanluqueño is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mateo Aćimović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Sanluqueño asked and Getafe said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Athletic Bilbao have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
The offer went to Cádiz this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
$2.3M on the table at Deportivo La Coruña. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $7.2M — a club that wants Sergio Ortuño enough to be asked twice.
The chase for Vasco Sousa ended with $540.0K changing hands and Betis out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Abdul Mendy 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.
Vasco Sousa was the name on every phone-in, and the club has gone and signed him for $540.0K. For one week the board can do no wrong, which is a week most boards never get.
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.
“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 Sanluqueño, and it is not being withdrawn.
Abdul Mendy 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Alan Fernando Gutierrez is living that version at Sanluqueño, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad31 May 2027
Words at Sanluqueño training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mateo Aćimović 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Sanluqueño can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sanluqueño this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marcos Denia scored, and precious little else went right: 2‑3 to Gimnàstic, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad19 Apr 2027
Words at Sanluqueño training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mateo Aćimović 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.” Sergio Santiago after 2‑3, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Nobody at Sanluqueño 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 manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Ronald Gbizie’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Sanluqueño needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sanluqueño know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Sanluqueño is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Asdrúbal and Sanluqueño agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Words at Sanluqueño training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Guille Macho 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Las Palmas will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sergio Barcia was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Las Palmas told Giovanni Bonfanti something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
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 Jesé is on it.
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 Taisei Miyashiro has written the date down.
Juanma Herzog 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.
They sit in position 17 and they will be waiting. Away form is where a season shows its true character, and this side has a point to make about its own.
Everybody at Sanluqueño saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 36 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Words at Sanluqueño training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mateo Aćimović 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 Julio Cabrera is on 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.
What was a back-page link has become a chant, and the chant is not friendly. Sanluqueño would rather it were settled quietly, and it has stopped being quiet.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Sanluqueño will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
5 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.
Abdul Mendy 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Mateo Aćimović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Nicolás Herrera will call it something else in private.
The dugout8 Mar 2027
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 Sergio Santiago to a room that had heard them before.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sanluqueño 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.
Nobody at Sanluqueño 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.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Alejandro Viedma’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Sanluqueño needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sanluqueño have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Sanluqueño offered $1.2M; Barcelona 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.
Alejandro Salas 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Mateo Aćimović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Marked 6.65 on 10 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
Squad15 Feb 2027
7 new faces, and Sanluqueño are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Sato scored, was marked 7.79, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Sanluqueño close the window on a squad of their own making
3 in and 0 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Sanluqueño have gone to Juventud Torremolinos with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sanluqueño this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Everybody at Sanluqueño saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 36 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Sanluqueño asked and Real Avilés said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Athletic Bilbao have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.