The words a physio says slowly. 85 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Joe Abrigo 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Palestino have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Julián Fernández 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.
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.
In brief
SquadWords at Palestino training over how hard people work
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Palestino have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Joe Abrigo 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
SquadThe manager has not finished forgetting Sebastián Pérez's mistake
Julián Fernández 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Palestino training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joe Abrigo 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Palestino have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Esteban Paredes is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Julián Fernández 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.
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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Palestino training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joe Abrigo 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Joe Abrigo 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Sebastián Pérez's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Julián Fernández 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.
Nobody at Palestino will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined 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 Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Joe Abrigo 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Julián Fernández 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 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.
Marked 8.88 — 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.
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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Palestino training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joe Abrigo 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.70 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Julián Fernández 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Dilan Zúñiga, and the manager let it.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Palestino training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Joe Abrigo 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.
A 1‑0 win over Santiago Wanderers, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.29 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was César Munder’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Palestino.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Joe Abrigo 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 8.25 — 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.
17 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
He is going to Pacos de Ferreira, the club has $520.0K it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
A first appearance Martín Araya will want to forget — 5.77
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 5.77, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Palestino this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Still no offer on the table, and Dilan Zúñiga’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 6 of the 29 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Julián Fernández and Palestino agree another 3 years.
Julián Fernández 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: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Palestino training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sebastián Pérez 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.