Successful dribbles: 21. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad7 Apr 2031
Words at Almagro training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Enzo Martínez 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 32 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.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.52 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Successful dribbles: 25. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Enzo Martínez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Juan Leguisamón 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.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
39 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Almagro lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Almagro they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Gino Barbieri 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.
Squad24 Feb 2031
Enzo Martínez 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ezequiel Cabrera and Almagro agree another 3 years.
Player ratings24 Feb 2031
Iago Arévalo was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.38. 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.
23 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Almagro lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Almagro they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
He is 18, he is averaging 6.53, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Central Córdoba SdE have kept their man, and Almagro go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Iago Arévalo 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Enzo Martínez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.