“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Banfield can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Banfield this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Lautaro Ríos 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.
In brief
Boardroom117% of the income goes out in wages at Banfield
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Banfield can pretend not to have heard.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.98 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Bruno Sepúlveda 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Favio Álvarez 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.
9 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Banfield this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Banfield training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Favio Álvarez 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Favio Álvarez. 2‑1 against Gimnasia La Plata, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.21 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
27 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.
Bruno Sepúlveda 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.
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.02 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“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 Banfield, 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 Banfield this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Joaquín Molina is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Banfield training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Favio Álvarez 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.
Player ratingsAn afternoon Lautaro Ríos will want back
9Edition
The Banfield Herald
28 Sep 2026
From our football correspondentUpbeat
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
A brace, and Favio Álvarez takes the afternoon — 9.26
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Favio Álvarez provided it, and the 9.26 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Bruno Sepúlveda 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.
A 3‑2 win over Aldosivi, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Favio Álvarez 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Tomás Adoryan was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.92. 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.
Marked 8.58 — 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Banfield this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Banfield, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
Shots: 7. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Bruno Sepúlveda 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Favio Álvarez 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.
Argentinos Juniors go through and Banfield go home, 0‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Banfield this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Banfield training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Favio Álvarez 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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Banfield, another week without a signature from Gino Santilli.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 40 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Banfield scored in the 109th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Santiago Daniele, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.91
A mark of 7.91 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Bruno Sepúlveda 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.
At 22 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.
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Federico Anselmo obliged against Güemes. 2‑0 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Banfield.
Two goals and a mark of 8.76 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Augusto Kalayda could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.46
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.46, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Brandon Oviedo, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.91
A mark of 7.91 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.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Lisandro Piñero was one of the reasons people came, and $3.4M does not replace that by itself.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Banfield this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Add another name to the list: Middlesbrough have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Federico Anselmo. The answer from Banfield has not changed — yet.
In brief
SquadWords at Banfield training over how hard people work
Bruno Sepúlveda 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.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 22 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Favio Álvarez 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.
Add another name to the list: Foolad have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Tiziano Perrotta. The answer from Banfield has not changed — yet.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
14 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.
Bruno Sepúlveda 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 is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Lautaro Ríos wants continental football; whether Banfield can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Banfield training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Santiago López García 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 offer from Empoli for Facundo Sanguinetti was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.12 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
1 for Santiago López García, marked 7.51, 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.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Facundo Sanguinetti wants continental football; whether Banfield 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 Banfield 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: Santiago López García. 3‑2 against Barracas Central, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Banfield training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Favio Álvarez 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.