The words a physio says slowly. 115 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 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.
Miguel Berlanga 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 were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Alejandro Duran after 1‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
The words a physio says slowly. 131 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Cacereño they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Getafe is saying, and nobody at Cacereño is enjoying the guessing.
4 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cacereño can tell you which week it ends in.
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.
138 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cacereño 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 Cacereño can pretend not to have heard.
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That is the business done at Cacereño until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
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.
Cacereño asked and Cádiz said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Javi Díaz has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
84 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Cacereño lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cacereño can tell you which week it ends in.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Javier Hyjek was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Kensly Vázquez has written the date down.
1 for Diego Guti, marked 7.66, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Miguel Berlanga 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.
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Javier Hyjek 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.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 1‑1, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
“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 Cacereño, and it is not being withdrawn.
Cacereño asked and Platense said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cacereño this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
12 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
A loan enquiry to Rosario Central: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.