The words a physio says slowly. 38 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.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Güemes can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Leandro Finochietto 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Güemes, another week without a signature from Santiago Sala.
Every squad is half players the manager chose and half players he inherited. Facundo Rizzi was chosen, the man who chose him has gone, and he starts again from nothing under the next one.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Güemes. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Miguel Ceccotti trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The words a physio says slowly. 30 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.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad11 Oct 2027
Tomás Galván 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Güemes are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Güemes. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Güemes would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
A side in position 15 visits next. The result will not make anybody’s season and it could quietly break the shape of one, which is why the manager has been watching the video since Sunday.
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout2 Aug 2027
Facundo Rizzi is still being punished for one mistake
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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑4, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
In brief
SquadTomás Galván falls out with a teammate over standards