Marked for Derlis Gimenez
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Boardroom6 Aug 2040
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Boardroom6 Aug 2040
Crisis meeting at Guarani
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Market6 Aug 2040
“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.
Squad6 Aug 2040
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Juan José Mera commits to Guarani for another 2 years.
Squad6 Aug 2040
César Miño in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Guarani this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad6 Aug 2040
Damián Bobadilla 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Jan 2040
A knee injury of the worst kind for Gonzalo Luján
141 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Guarani lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad2 Jan 2040
Alex Sosa has been here 14 seasons
47 appearances across 14 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Squad2 Jan 2040
Diego Rodríguez gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Diego Rodríguez has just signed for Guarani, and for once the answer mattered.
Market2 Jan 2040
“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.
Squad2 Jan 2040
Damián Bobadilla 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.
Market2 Jan 2040
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad8 Aug 2039
A fracture rules Salim Fago Lawal out for 109 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Guarani will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad8 Aug 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Jorge Caceres
30 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Guarani lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad8 Aug 2039
343 appearances across 14 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Feb 2039
Salim Fago Lawal damages knee ligaments — 24 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 24 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.
Squad14 Feb 2039
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Guarani may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad14 Feb 2039
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Guarani know it.
Squad14 Feb 2039
Agustín Manzur 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.
Player ratings14 Feb 2039
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match12 Feb 2039
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. General Caballero defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.