Marked for Facundo Rey
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad20 Sep 2032
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 Miguel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout20 Sep 2032
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Daniel Sappa, and the manager let it.
Match18 Sep 2032
Talleres left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings20 Sep 2032
Both jobs done by Lucas Díaz — 6.90
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. 9 actions, 6.90, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
The dugout20 Sep 2032
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Interim Coach after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Player ratings20 Sep 2032
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad20 Sep 2032
Robert Tefeleu 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.
Squad20 Sep 2032
Too much change too quickly at San Miguel
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Player ratings20 Sep 2032
Shots: 7. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market6 Sep 2032
Facundo Rey hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what San Miguel can pretend not to have heard.
Squad6 Sep 2032
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 Miguel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom6 Sep 2032
The owner puts $247.3K into San Miguel
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Boardroom6 Sep 2032
Wages eat 212% of everything San Miguel earn
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.
Boardroom6 Sep 2032
The embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
Boardroom6 Sep 2032
San Miguel are $11.0M in the red
The borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
Squad6 Sep 2032
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and San Miguel know it.
Squad6 Sep 2032
Robert Tefeleu 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.
The dugout6 Sep 2032
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 Matías Benítez is on it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match25 Oct 2031
Chastening afternoon for San Miguel
A 0‑3 beating by Sacachispas was the sort of result that empties a stadium long before the final whistle.
Squad27 Oct 2031
7 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Match25 Oct 2031
The wait goes on for San Miguel
4 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.
Squad27 Oct 2031
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 Miguel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match25 Oct 2031
4 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
The dugout27 Oct 2031
The manager makes an example of Jorge Ibáñez
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Boardroom27 Oct 2031
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout27 Oct 2031
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑3 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout27 Oct 2031
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 Matías Benítez is on it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom13 Jan 2031
The silence upstairs is getting loud at San Miguel
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad13 Jan 2031
Matías Benítez 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.
Boardroom13 Jan 2031
The numbers do not look good at San Miguel
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Transfer targets13 Jan 2031
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Banfield have kept their man, and San Miguel go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market13 Jan 2031
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Facundo Rey is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market13 Jan 2031
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Gustavo González has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market13 Jan 2031
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Franco Gutiérrez has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market13 Jan 2031
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Pedro Flores has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Squad13 Jan 2031
Martín Guzmán 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.