Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jean Lucas Severo is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Tomás Pozzo 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.
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.
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 Álex Perdomo is on it.
Germán Barrios 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.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Tomás Pozzo has moved up it.
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 has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Xavier Biscayzacú signs something — a contract at Defensor Sporting or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jean Lucas Severo is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Axel Frugone 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 system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Facundo Castro trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Matías Jaime is on it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Edgar Elizalde 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.
Tomás Pozzo 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.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Marcelo Silva and Defensor Sporting agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
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.