Everything agreed with Independiente, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
$190.0K was the most the club would pay and Newell's Old Boys 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.
The deal with Belgrano is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. All Boys know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
In brief
The dugoutBruno Moretti knocks on the manager’s door
BoardroomThe All Boys production line keeps running
“The easiest signature of my career.” Miguel Ángel Godoy and All Boys agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Nobody at All Boys 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Facundo Méndez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Position 3, 40 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
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.
Nobody at All Boys 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Ahmed Al-Rashidi signs something — a contract at All Boys or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
What was a back-page link has become a chant, and the chant is not friendly. All Boys would rather it were settled quietly, and it has stopped being quiet.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at All Boys, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The standards have slipped, and in a building where everybody watches everybody it has not gone unremarked. This is how a player loses a place before he loses one.
Mingachevir have made their interest known and All Boys have to have a conversation they never wanted. A manager other clubs ask about is a manager whose next contract costs more.
“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; All Boys are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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 Alejo Tabares is on it.
“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 All Boys will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
All Boys did not want this conversation and are having it anyway. A manager wanted elsewhere is a manager whose next contract talk just became more expensive.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Facundo Méndez will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around All Boys the goodbyes have quietly begun.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” All Boys have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 34 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for All Boys is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
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 will be explained as a change for the team and it may even be one. Nobody who has worn one believes that, and neither does the man who has just had it taken away.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. All Boys know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.