The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Nueva Chicago is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 27 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nueva Chicago this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A 2‑0 win over Chaco For Ever, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Juan Cruz Carranza will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Nueva Chicago the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Dylan Gissi 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Matías Romero. 2‑0 against Gimnasia y Esgrima, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Nueva Chicago, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nueva Chicago can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nueva Chicago this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Julián Sardinas trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Nueva Chicago this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Dylan Gissi 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.