Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Union Magdalena waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Barranquilla is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“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 The request is on a desk at Barranquilla, and it is not being withdrawn.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Barranquilla 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.
Barranquilla asked and Deportes Tolima said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Barranquilla this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
What was a back-page story is now a matter for the terraces, and the terraces do not do nuance. Barranquilla would like it dealt with before it becomes the only question anybody asks.
Iván Balanta damages knee ligaments — 107 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 107 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.
The offer from Envigado for Cristian Peñate 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.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Depor keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Depor moved on, Alex Mosquera reports back to Barranquilla, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
A season average of 7.03 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Barranquilla know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
The phone has started ringing about Carlos Durán again, and this time the name on the line is Amora. Barranquilla are listening politely and promising nothing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cristian Peñate was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Alianza Petrolera have kept their man, and Barranquilla go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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 am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Barranquilla, and 5 appearances in 16 say he has earned the hearing.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jhon Cortez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Cristian Peñate 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.
In brief
SquadWords at Barranquilla training over how hard people work