Jhonier Alomía 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. Juan David Lázaro is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
21 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Depor have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
David Agudelo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. David Agudelo 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.
José Otero 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.
4 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. America de Cali kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Depor will be asked about the last half hour all week.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Depor have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The terraces28 Feb 2028
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 7 of the 30 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Athos Thawan will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Depor the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.58, and 2 involvements.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Squad14 Feb 2028
David Agudelo 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Depor can tell you which week it ends in.
6 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 59 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Astra this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nicusor Stanciu 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Astra know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.