0‑3 to Sevilla, 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Alavés they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
A new deal for the man in the dugout, and the clearest thing a board can say without calling a press conference about it. Stability is cheap to promise and expensive to deliver.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Benjamín Suárez is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boardroom18 Aug 2031
14 academy players handed senior numbers at Alavés
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad18 Aug 2031
Tobías Gómez has improved at 26, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Nicolás Gutiérrez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Alavés they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bautista Bareiro is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Jul 2031
Words at Alavés training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miguel Rodríguez 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.
Squad21 Jul 2031
Tobías Gómez has improved at 26, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Alavés 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.
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.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Alavés have done the hard part with Mallorca, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
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.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Benjamín Suárez 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Toni Martínez signs something — a contract at Alavés or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Something was said to Juan Palomares and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
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 Jorge Gil is on it.
$7.1M settles it between the clubs for Adam Jakobsen
Castellón have accepted the money. What Alavés do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Alavés asked and Gijón said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Miguel Rodríguez 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Benjamín Suárez has just signed for Alavés, and for once the answer mattered.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Yusi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Carlos Benavídez is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
8 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.