The words a physio says slowly. 147 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.
Carlos Garcés 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.
Carlos Garcés 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Alan Benítez has just signed for Cienciano, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Cienciano training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Claudio Núñez 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 spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Renato Lopez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Claudio Núñez wants continental football; whether Cienciano can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cienciano this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cienciano is pretending he will be back in the shirt.