The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Gerardo Larraya will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Deportivo La Coruña the goodbyes have quietly begun.
25 games, 11 goals, and a squad option that has arrived without a fee attached. The interesting question at Deportivo La Coruña now is not whether he plays but who he displaces.
Squad29 May 2028
Luismi Cruz 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Deportivo La Coruña can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Deportivo La Coruña can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The words a physio says slowly. 57 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.
Player ratings1 May 2028
A brace, and Mario Soberón takes the afternoon — 8.97
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Mario Soberón provided it, and the 8.97 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“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 The request is on a desk at Deportivo La Coruña, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Deportivo La Coruña hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Deportivo La Coruña they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
88 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Deportivo La Coruña lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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.
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 is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Deportivo La Coruña can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Adama Traoré 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Gerardo Larraya will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Deportivo La Coruña the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Riki 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.
Four paragraphs on the club website, none of them about football. The board thanked him, wished him well, and had the search under way before the page went up.
118 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Deportivo La Coruña lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
“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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“Somebody picks the team on Saturday. This week it is me, and that is as far as I have thought.” No promises were made in either direction, which is how these usually begin.
7.80, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Adama Traoré and Deportivo La Coruña agree another 3 years.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Mariano Miño has agreed terms with Granada for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
99 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Deportivo La Coruña lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
0‑3 to Barcelona, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Deportivo La Coruña can pretend not to have heard.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 8 arrived, 7 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Gastón Gómez has, at Deportivo La Coruña, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
“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.
Adama Traoré 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.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
11 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.
113 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Deportivo La Coruña lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Alavés waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Deportivo La Coruña is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Danilo Gómez has, at Deportivo La Coruña, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
0‑5 to Barcelona, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Deportivo La Coruña have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
7 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.
Leo Román 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Rodrigo Escandar will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Deportivo La Coruña the goodbyes have quietly begun.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dani Barcia was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Deportivo La Coruña have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Deportivo La Coruña people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Gornik Leczna had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Adrià Altimira wants continental football; whether Deportivo La Coruña 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 Deportivo La Coruña this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 33 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giacomo Quagliata 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 never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.