“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 The request is on a desk at Artigas, and it is not being withdrawn.
Artigas asked and Central Espanol said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad8 Dec 2031
Words at Artigas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mauricio Lacerda 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Artigas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 38 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Artigas is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Squad10 Nov 2031
Words at Artigas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Edgardo Carreño 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mauricio Lacerda trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Artigas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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 club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Artigas are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Franco Martínez signs something — a contract at Artigas or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
3 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Artigas could ask drops and the wages José Duarte can ask rise.
The words a physio says slowly. 56 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Artigas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Luiz 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.