It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Aston Villa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Harvey Elliott has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
The name of Omar Khedr has come up in conversations Aston Villa were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Marked 8.03 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
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.
Boubacar Kamara 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Elijah Briscoe is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Boubacar Kamara 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 18 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Amadou Onana 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Yerry Cordoba has just signed for Aston Villa, and for once the answer mattered.
Every dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Yerry Cordoba is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
The offer from Leeds United for Marco Bizot 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Aston Villa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
4 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.
In brief
SquadWords at Aston Villa training over how hard people work
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.37 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
At 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Diego Medina 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.
A 2‑1 win over Union Magdalena, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Sergio Hurtado has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Diego Medina was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.50. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Cortulua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Wilmar Uribe 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.
Diego Medina wins it after the whistle should have gone
90 minutes played. Diego Medina found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Envigado went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Two goals and a mark of 8.76 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Cortulua heard it as anything 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 Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Diego Medina. 2‑1 against Envigado, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Julian Bacca, and the manager let it.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Wilmar Uribe 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.