0‑5 to Santos Laguna, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Position 18 on 10 points. Every season is a story and this is the last line of it, and now the club has three months to decide what the next one is about.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Jordan García 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.
11 combined actions and 6.44. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
The dugout11 Mar 2030
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑5 Interim Coach left the room before anybody could ask which.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Fernando Ramírez has his answer from Chiapas; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Chiapas people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Jordan García 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.
Squad7 Jan 2030
Words at Chiapas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Enzo López 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Colorado Rapids have kept their man, and Chiapas go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 15 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
42 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Chiapas is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
$1.2M on the table at Tijuana. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Colorado Rapids keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Osmar González is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad30 Jul 2029
Daniel Amador 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Crvena Zvezda have kept their man, and Chiapas go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Position 18 and 4 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.
Transfer targets11 Jun 2029
$1.5M settles it between the clubs for Yael Padilla
Tijuana have accepted the money. What Chiapas do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
The offer from Puebla for Donovan Moreno 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Osmar González has, at Chiapas, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Manuel Bouvet and Chiapas agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad11 Jun 2029
Enzo López 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.