It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo La Coruña this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 The request is on a desk at Deportivo La Coruña, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Tomás Alonso will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Deportivo La Coruña the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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 Deportivo La Coruña this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Deportivo La Coruña will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Deportivo La Coruña has to find a result from somewhere.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo La Coruña this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 10.00 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
7 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Deportivo La Coruña and Cádiz in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ignacio Ovando is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Ferland 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.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Ferland Mendy signs something — a contract at Deportivo La Coruña or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Ferland 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.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
The fee is $3.8M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Rosario Central drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo La Coruña this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Deportivo La Coruña heard it as anything else.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Leroy-Jacques Mickels has just signed for Deportivo La Coruña, and for once the answer mattered.
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.
“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 Rosario Central, and it is not being withdrawn.
Deportivo La Coruña pay $3.8M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Rosario Central this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Rosario Central they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jaminton Campaz 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 given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Rosario Central know it.
Franco Ibarra 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 young player of the month award goes to a 20-year-old at Rosario Central who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Cruz Komar 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Juan Cruz Cerrudo wants continental football; whether Rosario Central can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad5 Jun 2028
A place in the month's best eleven for Franco Ibarra
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Franco Ibarra has come out of that comparison in the side, and Rosario Central have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.