“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 The request is on a desk at Valladolid, and it is not being withdrawn.
David Alaba 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.
Squad13 Oct 2031
Words at Valladolid training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iván Alejo 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.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Interim Coach on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Successful dribbles: 13. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Gabriel Repciuc is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad11 Aug 2031
Words at Valladolid training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iván Alejo 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.
At 35 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.
Valladolid have made the call to Farense. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Valladolid can pretend not to have heard.
Leganés have accepted the money. What Valladolid do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Egoitz Arana 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.
At 22 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.
Squad14 Jul 2031
David Alaba 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Hugo Montero has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Jorge Cortés 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.
Position 20 and 30 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Iván Alejo was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Valladolid has been clear about where Lautaro Kapij stands, which is more than many ever get.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
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.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Juventus people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Juventus is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Juventus this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dušan Vlahović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Add another name to the list: Pescara have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Emanuele Giaretta. The answer from Juventus has not changed — yet.
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 Dušan Vlahović is on it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Palermo waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Juventus is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Gabriel Repciuc had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Juventus can pretend not to have heard.
Marcus Rashford 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 Dušan Vlahović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
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.
78 points from position 4. The title is somebody else’s business and the drop is somebody else’s problem; what is left is the argument about passports.