2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.96, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings12 Aug 2047
A brace, and Franco López takes the afternoon — 8.15
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Franco López provided it, and the 8.15 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
14 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
A mark of 7.81 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 8 goals between Maipú and Alvarado, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Nobody at Maipú 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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.35 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.55 for the rest of it.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Maipú and All Boys in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Nobody at Maipú 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.
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. José Pereyra has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maipú can pretend not to have heard.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.72, and 2 involvements.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Maipú have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Nobody at Maipú 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.
13 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Maipú will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
14 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Racing defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Maipú have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 18 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
43 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Maipú lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 5 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maipú can pretend not to have heard.
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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Iván Ramírez has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maipú can pretend not to have heard.
Nobody at Maipú 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.
At 17 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joaquín Torres 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.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maipú can pretend not to have heard.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Benicio Pérez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Chances created: 5. Not on the scoresheet and not remotely anonymous — a passing performance that pulled a defence apart without leaving a mark on the column that gets read.
There were 87 minutes on the clock and Ferro Carril Oeste had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Maipú did not stop to explain themselves.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maipú can pretend not to have heard.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 20-year-old it feels ownership of. Miguel Ángel Moreno has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Nobody at Maipú 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.