Marked for Benjamín Saavedra
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market18 Jun 2029
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around San Martín SJ people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Match18 Jun 2029
Position 3 and 34 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Market18 Jun 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at San Martín SJ, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match16 Jun 2029
After 8 games, San Martín SJ finally taste it again
The first defeat in 8 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Chacarita Juniors; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Matías Borgogno 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.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Defences have started doubling up on Genaro Rossi
14 goals and a season average of 7.28 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Benjamín Saavedra arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Benjamín Saavedra has, at San Martín SJ, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Words at San Martín SJ training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Genaro Rossi 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.
Transfer targets18 Jun 2029
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Jan 2028
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Atlético Tucumán will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad3 Jan 2028
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Atlético Tucumán will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Squad3 Jan 2028
Leandro Díaz 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.
Squad3 Jan 2028
32 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Transfer targets3 Jan 2028
The clock did what Independiente would not, and ended it. Supporters who watched the countdown will spend the next window doing it again.
The dugout3 Jan 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Mateo Coronel, and the manager let it.
The dugout3 Jan 2028
Moisés Brandán has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Atlético Tucumán 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.
Market3 Jan 2028
The Tomás Durso talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Atlético Tucumán know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad27 Dec 2027
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Atlético Tucumán will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The dugout27 Dec 2027
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Market27 Dec 2027
Tomás Jung hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Atlético Tucumán can pretend not to have heard.
Market27 Dec 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Patricio Albornoz will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Atlético Tucumán the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Leandro Díaz 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.
Squad27 Dec 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ramiro Ruiz Rodríguez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout27 Dec 2027
Leandro Díaz knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Atlético Tucumán, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout27 Dec 2027
Lautaro Godoy gets picked when it counts
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 Lautaro Godoy is on it.
The dugout27 Dec 2027
Something was said to Juan Rodríguez and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.