The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 129th minute. Albion will replay every second of the added time for a week.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Plaza Colonia is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ivan Cabrera did not need any: 8.43, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
7.76, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Plaza Colonia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Pablo Viudez will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Plaza Colonia the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Plaza Colonia can pretend not to have heard.
Yoann Salmier 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.
Squad24 Nov 2031
Words at Plaza Colonia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Villalba 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.
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 Emiliano Márquez is on it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Plaza Colonia will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The words a physio says slowly. 15 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.
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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Maximiliano Galván will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Plaza Colonia the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Máximo Lorenzi 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.
Squad6 Oct 2031
Yoann Salmier 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.
Every squad has men who were signed by a particular manager and men who were merely inherited. Yoann Salmier is in the first group, and the man who wanted him here is no longer in the building.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Plaza Colonia can pretend not to have heard.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.26 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
6 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 15 actions, 7.19, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Squad26 May 2031
Words at Plaza Colonia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Augusto Mosquera 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 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.
Player ratings5 May 2031
A brace, and Pablo Viudez takes the afternoon — 9.51
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Pablo Viudez provided it, and the 9.51 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Plaza Colonia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
9 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Plaza Colonia and Boston River in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
8.64. 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.