It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Veracruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Words at Veracruz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gustavo Canto 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.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Sebastián Cervantes is 20, and Veracruz have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
In brief
Player ratingsRaul Romo spends the afternoon fouling
Jorge Ramirez 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Hubert Jasiak has just signed for Veracruz, and for once the answer mattered.
1 error, one goal, and a night in front of the same three seconds. He will see it tonight, tomorrow and probably in February, and everybody who has played knows exactly which frame he keeps stopping on.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Veracruz know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Marco Alvarez obliged against Dorados. 2‑1 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Veracruz.
Match28 Aug 2027
Jorge Ramirez wins it after the whistle should have gone
91 minutes played. Jorge Ramirez found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Santos Laguna went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Marco Alvarez scored in the 86th minute, Dorados had already begun thinking about the journey home, and Veracruz took the lot.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.35 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.16 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Amaury Morales did not need any: 8.15, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.61 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Amaury Morales, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.75
A mark of 7.75 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad23 Aug 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Diego Perez's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Ignacio Zaballa 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.
Squad23 Aug 2027
9 new faces, and Veracruz are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Fernando Salcedo was one of the reasons people came, and $14.9M does not replace that by itself.
Jorge Ramirez 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.
6 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Gabriel Vega 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Angel Jimenez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Jorge Moreno 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Veracruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
In brief
SquadOribe Reyes has become a man the manager trusts
The fee is $480.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Puebla drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Veracruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces21 Jun 2027
Veracruz spend $480.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $480.0K for Fernando Monarrez, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Chiapas paid $84.0K and Veracruz took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Fernando Salcedo has his answer from Veracruz; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Santiago Ramirez 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.
In brief
SquadOribe Reyes has become a man the manager trusts
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Veracruz have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Carlos Arteaga 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.
In brief
SquadJorge Herrera has become a man the manager trusts
SquadIvan Ramirez asks for a word with the manager
Loan watchJorge Ramirez watches his loan from the bench
Santiago Ramirez 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 at Veracruz 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.
Santiago Ramirez 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.
José Alvarado 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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Veracruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The phone has started ringing about Jorge Ramirez again, and this time the name on the line is Tijuana. Veracruz are listening politely and promising nothing.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Veracruz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Nobody at Veracruz 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.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.95 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
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.
Paulo Ramírez 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Veracruz will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
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 7.72 for the rest of it.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Fernando Salcedo wants continental football; whether Veracruz can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
10 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 98 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Jorge Ramirez 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 sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and Veracruz have gone and got theirs early.