“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what General Caballero JLM can pretend not to have heard.
6 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.
Luis Mendoza 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 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.
Successful dribbles: 23. 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.
Miguel Benítez 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.
“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.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Isaías Franco was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.23. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Luis Corrales is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Aldo Quiñónez 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.
Fernando de la Mora next, and one man in the General Caballero JLM dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Antonio Cubas trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Next up on the road: Fernando de la Mora, position 14. The supporters who go will talk about it all week and the ones who do not will check their phones at ten to five.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $36.0K — a club that wants Hugo Gaona enough to be asked twice.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. General Caballero JLM have done the hard part with River Plate, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
$34.0K was the most the club would pay and River Plate 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.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
7 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
General Caballero JLM have made the call to O'Higgins. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
General Caballero JLM have made the call to Newell's Old Boys. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Luis Corrales is 20, and General Caballero JLM have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.