14 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Central Norte lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a 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 Central Norte this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Leonardo Felissia was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“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 Central Norte will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
The offer from Envigado for Francisco Borda was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Central Norte can pretend not to have heard.
Agustín Lamosa 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.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Words at Central Norte training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maximiliano Ribero 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 list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Matías Villarreal may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Erik Bodencer has moved up it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Central Norte know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The registration window is open and the phone has started. Between now and the deadline this club will be linked with forty players and sign three, which is the usual ratio.
In brief
The dugoutMatías Salgado asks for a word with the manager
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Maximiliano Ribero wants continental football; whether Central Norte can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Agustín Lamosa 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
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.
“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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Central Norte know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Matías Salgado trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.