Nobody at Estudiantes 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.
Ninety minutes, no goals, and the argument started before the car park emptied: a point gained, or two thrown away against Mitre? Both sides of it will still be going on Thursday.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Ezequiel Forclaz signs something — a contract at Estudiantes or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 11 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Nobody at Estudiantes is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Estudiantes, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The words a physio says slowly. 23 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Estudiantes can tell you which week it ends in.
17 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Estudiantes are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Estudiantes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
19 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.
$6.5M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Tobías Leiva was one of the reasons people came, and $6.5M does not replace that by itself.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Alejandro Cabrera and Estudiantes agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
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.
Boardroom4 Feb 2030
6 academy players handed senior numbers at Estudiantes
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Squad4 Feb 2030
Words at Estudiantes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tobías Ostchega 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.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Nueva Chicago lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Nueva Chicago will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Evelio Cardozo 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.
Squad18 Jun 2029
Words at Nueva Chicago training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gonzalo Trindade 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.
“I watch every Nueva Chicago game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Austin FC runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.