Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. San Lorenzo have kept their man, and Central Córdoba SdE go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Zikrillo Sūltaniiazov 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.
Squad30 Jun 2036
Guarabira 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 had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Central Córdoba SdE, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody at Central Córdoba SdE 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.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
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.
Position 15 and 3 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
8 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Central Córdoba SdE has to find a result from somewhere.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Central Córdoba SdE, another week without a signature from Mateo Sánchez.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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.
In brief
The dugoutFranco Orieta knocks on the manager's door
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.
114 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Central Córdoba SdE lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Central Córdoba SdE is running low.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bruno Belizán was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Central Córdoba SdE 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 121 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Central Córdoba SdE have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Central Córdoba SdE, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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 Pedro Peçanha is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Central Córdoba SdE know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.