“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Güemes can pretend not to have heard.
Dionel Ansaldo 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.
$1.0K was the most the club would pay and Huracán were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
13 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.
32 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Güemes lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
0‑3 to Real Pilar, 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.
Dionel Ansaldo 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.
6 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Güemes can tell you which week it ends in.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Güemes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
0‑2 to San Martín de Burzaco, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad24 Mar 2031
Sifiso Lorch 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 dugout24 Mar 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 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
Güemes interviewed the field and appointed the corridor: Interim Coach keeps the job he had been doing in all but title. Sometimes the safest pair of hands is the one already holding the wheel.
“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 Güemes, and it is not being withdrawn.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Roque Maisterra was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“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.
The dugout24 Feb 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 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Interim Coach to a room that had heard them before.
Alejandro Giraldo 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.
The manager has a list and the board has a condition attached to it. That is not a crisis — half of football works this way — but it decides which of the two of them gets his way in August.
“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 Güemes, and it is not being withdrawn.
Dionel Ansaldo 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.
9 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sifiso Lorch was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Güemes, another week without a signature from Nil Cano.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Gianluca Pugliese signs something — a contract at Güemes or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Güemes will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.