Facundo Pons 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at San Martín this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 35, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Nobody at San Martín will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“I want to stay in the game when I stop, and I am not going to wait until I stop to prepare for it.” At 36 the badges have begun, and every manager in the division remembers doing the same.
In brief
MatchNothing left to play for but pride at San Martín
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 39 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Santino Roldán did not need any: 8.09, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad27 Aug 2029
Words at San Martín training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Facundo Pons 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.
Fabio Vega 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Facundo Pons. 2‑0 against Quilmes, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
46 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. San Martín lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad25 Sep 2028
Facundo Pons 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at San Martín, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Words at San Martín training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Facundo Pons 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.
Nobody at San Martín will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Guillermo Rodríguez signs something — a contract at San Martín or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at San Martín, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at San Martín this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. San Martín were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
He is 20, and nobody at San Martín signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Luis Moreno is 17, and San Martín have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Laureano Rodríguez is on it.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. San Martín will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
A new face in his position and a shirt he thought he owned suddenly up for discussion. San Martín have promised nothing, which is what clubs promise at this stage.