“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Argentinos Juniors have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Add another name to the list: Aldosivi have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Santiago Silveira. The answer from Argentinos Juniors has not changed — yet.
“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 The request is on a desk at Argentinos Juniors, and it is not being withdrawn.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Fabricio Velardes wants continental football; whether Argentinos Juniors can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Gonzalo Siri and Argentinos Juniors agree another 2 years.
The words a physio says slowly. 98 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.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Argentinos Juniors have had the benefit of it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Argentinos Juniors have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The name of Alan Alcaraz has come up in conversations Argentinos Juniors were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
16 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Sarmiento moved on, Agustín Burgardt reports back to Argentinos Juniors, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.32 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Fran will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Argentinos Juniors the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad25 May 2037
Diego Porcel 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Argentinos Juniors this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
76 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Argentinos Juniors lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Add another name to the list: Aldosivi have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Santiago Silveira. The answer from Argentinos Juniors has not changed — yet.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Argentinos Juniors is pretending he will be back in the shirt.