He is going to Galatasaray, the club has $4.5M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Jaguares paid $1.7M and America de Cali took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 24 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Aguilas Doradas paid $1.3M and America de Cali took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all 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 America de Cali this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Eric González is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
The words a physio says slowly. 38 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Alavés 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 will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Lucas Boyé wants continental football; whether Alavés can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Ander Guevara 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Alavés training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pablo Martínez 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.
Nobody's fault and entirely his: a goal that goes into the book with his name against it and nothing about it intended. Alavés deserved better, and so did he.
8 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Alavés can pretend not to have heard.
Pablo Martínez 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.
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Alavés training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Facundo Garcés 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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Pablo Martínez is living that version at Alavés, and it tends to show in the first month.
The chase for Eric González ended with $1.2M changing hands and Defensores Unidos out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Ander Guevara 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 morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Alavés training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pablo Martínez 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 phone has started ringing about Ville Koski again, and this time the name on the line is Zaragoza. Alavés are listening politely and promising nothing.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Andrés Suárez has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Jon Aguilar is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Squad17 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and Alavés 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.
In brief
BoardroomNo investment in the facilities at Alavés
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Eric González was one of the reasons people came, and $1.2M does not replace that by itself.
Alavés paid $1.2M and Defensores Unidos took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Martín Giménez 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.
19 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
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.
Martín Giménez 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Alan Sombra wants continental football; whether Defensores Unidos can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alan Sombra 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.