Nueva Chicago have received the call every well-run club eventually receives — somebody bigger has noticed Carlos Alberto Bianchi. Saying no is easy; keeping him convinced is the actual work.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Nueva Chicago they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Dylan Gissi and Nueva Chicago agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Alan Ruiz 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.
Thiago Serrano and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Boardroom7 Aug 2028
129% of the income goes out in wages at Nueva Chicago
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Camilo Granados is the division's best young player this month
At 19 he has spent a month being better than everybody his age in the league, which is a different and harder thing than one good afternoon. Nueva Chicago will try very hard not to make too much of it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Nueva Chicago will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The offer from Junior for Matías Bergara 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.
7.18, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Nueva Chicago have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Nueva Chicago have done the hard part with UAI Urquiza, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Estudiantes is saying, and nobody at Nueva Chicago is enjoying the guessing.
Squad26 Jun 2028
Alan Ruiz 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.
Nueva Chicago asked and Flandria said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Qualification is secured, and next season the big floodlit nights are continental ones. For the players it is a stage; for the accounts it is a lifeline; for the supporters it is passports.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Estudiantes have lost him in all but the paperwork.
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. Estudiantes will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Thiago Serrano has agreed terms with Sacachispas for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Valentín Gargiulo has, at Estudiantes, and the first month will show what that does to a man.