21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSIM lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Franco Ramos Mingo 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.
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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. PSIM will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
90 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. PSIM lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSIM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at PSIM 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” PSIM have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Franco Ramos Mingo 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.
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.
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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSIM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan José Forero 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.
15 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.
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.
The words a physio says slowly. 121 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.
“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 PSIM, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSIM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
20 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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Ezequiel Vidal is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 13 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
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 PSIM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what PSIM can pretend not to have heard.
The terraces19 Apr 2027
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 8 of the 30 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
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.
Franco Ramos Mingo 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at PSIM, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Nobody at PSIM is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon Ousmane Camara will want back
The words a physio says slowly. 57 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSIM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.