The words a physio says slowly. 18 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nicolás Barrientos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. All Boys told Alejo Rodríguez something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. All Boys lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
0‑3 to Gimnasia y Tiro, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what All Boys can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 May 2027
Words at All Boys training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nicolás Barrientos 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Santiago Apa 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 Ricardo Blanco was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
In brief
The dugoutIván Zafarana knocks on the manager's door
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at All Boys is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Felipe Coronel has agreed terms with Lanús for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ricardo Blanco was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Alexis Melo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at All Boys this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
22 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Gustavo Turraca trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Alejo Tabares signs something — a contract at All Boys or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Lionel Paz has his answer from All Boys; what he does with it is the next window’s story.