The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Oribe Montes did not need any: 7.77, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
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.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
At 36, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Hugo Lozano could afford to be generous.
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Chiapas moved on, Cesar Marquez reports back to Veracruz, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Santiago Cena is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Mariano Penepil and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Veracruz can pretend not to have heard.
Successful dribbles: 27. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Kevin Rodriguez, 17, plays like he has been here for years — 7.82
A mark of 7.82 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 17-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $204.8K — a club that wants Paul Bellón enough to be asked twice.
Everything agreed with Ferro Carril Oeste, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
In brief
Transfer targetsAn offer of $190.0K for Paul Bellón