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.
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.
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.
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.
A conversation is coming this week. Palestino will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Ian Garguez is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
“We pay for this every fortnight. The least we want is somebody who looks like he cares.” 9 of the 29 senior players walked off into it; the rest were not playing.
The name of Nelson Da Silva has come up in conversations Palestino were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
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.
Cobresal left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
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.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.72 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Sebastián Pérez, and the manager let it.
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.
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.
4 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.31 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
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.
9.06. 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jonathan Benítez. 2‑1 against Universidad Catolica, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
36 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.