Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Pablo Salomoni 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.
Nobody at Union La Calera will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Cristóbal López is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Nicolás Avellaneda 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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Matías Ríos has written the date down.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Union La Calera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 2‑3 defeat, delivered by Luis Meneses to a room that had heard them before.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Universidad de Chile.
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Union La Calera have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Yerko Leiva’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Union La Calera needing him to play as if none of it matters.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Benjamin Argandoña did not need any: 7.76, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.95 for the rest of it.
6 goals in one match, Francisco Pozzo on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Union La Calera and Huachipato.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cristián Gutiérrez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Luis Meneses on a 2‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.