Ricardo Chávez 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Monterrey can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
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 has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Orbelín Pineda signs something — a contract at Monterrey or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Atlas next, and one man in the Monterrey dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Monterrey have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Monterrey hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Germán Berterame wants continental football; whether Monterrey can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Aldo López 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.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Monterrey, and 0 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Monterrey they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad26 Jun 2028
Words at Monterrey training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Franco Romero 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Monterrey this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
Squad14 new faces, and Monterrey are still learning each other