“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Francisco Morel had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
$250.0K on the table at Libertad. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Nacional have gone to Sportivo Trinidense with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Nelson Eliseche has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Nacional have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Nacional will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
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 manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Franco Pelozo is on it.
Sportivo Trinidense wanted more than $2.1M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Juan Flores will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around River Plate the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Sportivo Luqueno will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Hugo Gaona has pre-agreed a move to River Plate, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Add another name to the list: General Caballero have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Rodolfo Rodríguez. The answer from River Plate has not changed — yet.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at River Plate this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
River Plate have made the call to Olimpia. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
$3.6M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and River Plate waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Nacional is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
He is going to Cerro Porteno, the club has $3.6M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
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.
$290.0K was the most the club would pay and Libertad were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Cerro Porteno have kept their man, and Nacional go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Tobías Sanabria 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.
$2.0M 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Pablo Garcete has, at River Plate, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Jonathan González has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Olimpia will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Lucas Ramírez has pre-agreed a move to River Plate, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Every dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Pablo Garcete is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
Rodolfo Rodríguez 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.
The offer from Libertad for Fabrizio Jara 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.
Guarani have accepted the money. What Nacional do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
$140.0K on the table at Libertad. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Angel Cardozo has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Nobody at Nacional 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.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and Nacional have no good answer.
The terraces14 Dec 2026
Supporters make their feelings known about Lucas González
The speculation has reached the stands, and the stands have answered. Nacional would like this settled before it becomes the only thing anybody asks about.
In brief
The dugoutMarcelo Ríos knocks on the manager’s door
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nacional this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
10 goals in 17 games at AVS — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Nacional updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Celso Ortiz 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.
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 manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Leandro Meza is on it.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Josué Colmán wants continental football; whether Nacional can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Santiago Rojas 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 Matías Almeida was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Carlos Espínola is on it.