Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Chiapas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 12 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
1‑4 to Cruz Azul, 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.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 8 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Rubén Segura 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.
6 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
102 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Chiapas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Chiapas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Chiapas is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
309 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.97 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“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 The request is on a desk at Chiapas, and it is not being withdrawn.
Marked 9.00 — 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Chiapas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Beaten 1‑3, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad21 Dec 2037
Words at Chiapas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rubén Segura 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 words a physio says slowly. 29 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.
Squad16 Nov 2037
Rubén Segura 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Chiapas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The words a physio says slowly. 36 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.
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Jeyson Durán commits to Chiapas for another 2 years.
Squad9 Nov 2037
Words at Chiapas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rubén Segura 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.
Shots: 10. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
In brief
Player ratingsThe one thing Jeyson Durán could not do
Joban González 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.
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Chiapas will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.