80 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Bryan Gil 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Enzo Loiodice. 1‑0 against Burgos, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Oriol Rosell damages knee ligaments — 104 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 104 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.
Player ratings24 Jan 2028
Gonzalo Petit, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.79
A mark of 7.79 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Enrique Clemente wants continental football; whether Las Palmas can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about 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 Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Jan 2028
Marc Bernal 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.
Oriol Rosell damages knee ligaments — 113 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 113 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.
7.47, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Bryan Gil wants continental football; whether Las Palmas can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Marc Bernal 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.
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.
131 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Gonzalo Petit did not need any: 9.74, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Las Palmas hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
At 21 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.
Dinko Horkaš 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.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Words at Las Palmas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Manu Fuster 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Las Palmas can pretend not to have heard.
Enrique Clemente 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 interest is real enough to have reached print. Las Palmas have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Sergio Barcia 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.
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and Las Palmas will not try tonight.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad25 Jan 2027
The division's best last weekend was a Las Palmas man
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Antonio Casas was the best thing in any of them.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Enrique Clemente 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Kirian. 1‑0 against Gijón, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Oriol Rosell 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.
Marked 8.27 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The words a physio says slowly. 25 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.
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 7.80 for the rest 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 Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Fábio Cardoso’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Las Palmas.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Las Palmas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sergio Barcia 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 34 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.
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.
Dinko Horkaš 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Las Palmas, another week without a signature from Fábio Cardoso.
42 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas 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 Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Las Palmas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Oriol Rosell 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.
In brief
Player ratingsA defender's afternoon for Sergio Barcia
51 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Mirandés are out and Las Palmas go through, 2‑1 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Iker Bravo, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.84
A mark of 7.84 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.
Dinko Horkaš 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Estanis Pedrola 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.
Marked 8.49. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Las Palmas.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Sergio Barcia 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 words a physio says slowly. 59 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.
Oriol Rosell 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.
Ceuta made Las Palmas work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Manu Fuster 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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Ceuta spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
67 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Las Palmas can pretend not to have heard.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Fábio Cardoso 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.
“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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Oriol Rosell 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 words a physio says slowly. 75 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.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Mallorca moved on, Kirian reports back to Las Palmas, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Sergio Barcia. 1‑0 against Castellón, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Las Palmas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sergio Barcia 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Sergio Barcia was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.25. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
The words a physio says slowly. 82 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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.27 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 Las Palmas, and it is not being withdrawn.
Enrique Clemente 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 words a physio says slowly. 89 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.
Getafe paid $4.9M and Las Palmas took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all 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 Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
3 academy players handed senior numbers at Las Palmas
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Jaime Núñez 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Marc Camacho is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
96 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Las Palmas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Jorge Meré has just signed for Las Palmas, and for once the answer mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Las Palmas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
He is 19, and nobody at Las Palmas signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.