Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 88th, and Dorados spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Giorgos Giakoumakis 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Iker Fimbres. 3‑2 against Dorados, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 23 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.
5 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Carlos Rotondi wants continental football; whether Cruz Azul can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Chiapas spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
18 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Tigres heard it as anything else.
Toral Bayramov 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 23 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jose Ramirez is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Juan Brunetta 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Sabino is living that version at Tigres, and it tends to show in the first month.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Sifiso Billiat is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Albion Rrahmani 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 has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Albion Rrahmani signs something — a contract at Tigres or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.