Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around River Plate they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Yamil Silva and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Iván Morel falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Juan Flores has, at River Plate, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
$190.0K on the table at Sportivo Trinidense. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Joshua Romero falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
8 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jonathan Amarilla trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Cerro Porteno is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Manuel Roffo 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.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Words at Cerro Porteno training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Pablo Vegetti 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.
In brief
The dugoutAlan Soñora has become a man the manager trusts
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Iván Morel will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Cerro Porteno the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Manuel Roffo 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Pablo Vegetti falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
14 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Agustín Callejas and Cerro Porteno agree another 3 years.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cerro Porteno they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Jonatan Torres wants continental football; whether Cerro Porteno can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Manuel Roffo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Gastón Giménez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
13 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.
Nobody at Cerro Porteno will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cerro Porteno they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The deal that would have taken Lucas Quintana to Sanfrecce Hiroshima has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Cerro Porteno with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cerro Porteno this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Cerro Porteno can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
In brief
SquadWords at Cerro Porteno training over how hard people work
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cerro Porteno they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Cerro Porteno can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Iván Morel has agreed terms with River Plate for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Jonatan Torres 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pablo Vegetti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
In brief
The dugoutAriel Gamarra knocks on the manager’s door