The Silent Bench of 'Hormiga': González's Minutes Politics at Alguacil's Olympiacos

On derby night Olympiacos won 1-0, and Armando 'Hormiga' González stayed on the bench — ninety minutes, not one more. Football never measures a win through a player's minutes. But in the career of a forward, especially one searching for his place under a new coach, the length of the bench becomes the most honest kind of news. I have been writing that news down for weeks — in a small notebook, in a minutes column. 67, then 62, then 14, then 0. Four numbers that read like someone slowly, silently, closing a door.

In Spanish, 'Hormiga' means ant. The insect that works inside the cracks, unseen, but never stops working. Ants never stand in the middle of the pitch and receive applause; they work the edges. González's nickname fits his game strangely well — he is the forward who slips into space, hides behind a defender's shoulder, moves before the ball arrives. But for the past few weeks the ant has been sitting on the bench. The question is simple: under the new coach, has he truly been lost, or is he merely passing through the cold weather of a season in transition? To find the answer I had to look behind the minutes, not at the scoreline.

Context: From Shadow to Light, Mendilibar to Alguacil

The story begins on the evening of 10 September 2026, when Olympiacos parted with José Luis Mendilibar and handed the reins to Imanol Alguacil. Mendilibar means direct, high-intensity, quick-transition football — win the ball and sprint forward, fight for second balls, play long into the air. Alguacil arrives speaking a different language: patient possession, positional attack, press-triggers in defined zones, a disciplined Mediterranean patience. A coaching change is never just a name change; it is a change in the entire team's physical and mental rhythm. Those who breathed with the old rhythm must relearn when to breathe.

The Greek Super League context matters here. Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, AEK, PAOK, Aris — the top-tier battle these five or six clubs create turns every derby into the season's highest mountain. To be in a title race is to carry an extra weight beyond the three points each week: the board's expectations, the stands' patience, the media's arithmetic. In such an environment a new coach usually holds on to his 'safe' players, especially in the first few weeks. Few coaches dare to break a winning team.

I have watched for years how the first month of a coaching change is sometimes a laboratory and sometimes a fortress. In the laboratory new faces play and old faces rest. In the fortress the old faces become the walls and the new faces wait at the door. Which one is happening at Olympiacos is not revealed by the score but by the bench. And González's bench story has already spoken four numbers.

Core Analysis: The Geography of Minutes

Under the new coach González has played 143 minutes across three matches, scored one Europa League goal, and received zero minutes in the biggest match. The figure sounds small, yet inside it lies an entire season's story — promise, erosion, uncertainty. I want to break this geography of minutes into four layers, because each layer says something different.

The promise of the first two matches. 67 minutes against OFI Creta, then 62 against Jagiellonia. These two numbers do not shout, but what they say matters: in the new coach's first two matches González was part of the rotation or the first eleven. For a forward in the post-Mendilibar moment, receiving more than six or seven dozen minutes in the opening two games means the coach wanted to see him, wanted to test him. These are not numbers of dismissal; they are numbers of evaluation. As I noted them in my book, I thought: fine, the ant has found a crack.

The second layer — the Levadiakos collapse. The minutes suddenly drop from 62 to roughly 14. This is where the biggest signal hides. 67 to 62 is normal fluctuation, the difference of opponent and rhythm. But 62 to 14 is no longer fluctuation; it is a message. Such a steep fall usually points to one or more of three causes: tactical mismatch (the coach perhaps wanted a different kind of No.9 that day), physical condition (fatigue, a small injury, or adaptation to new physical demands), or a game-plan and opponent-specific decision. To be honest, the minute-count alone cannot determine the cause. But the minute-count gives me permission to suspect.

The third layer — the derby zero. Against Panathinaikos González sat on the bench for the full 90 minutes, while Marius Mouandilmadji started as centre-forward. This decision is the clearest indication. A derby is a coach's announcement of his most trusted eleven. Who starts is tactics; who sits is hierarchy. Starting González instead of Mouandilmadji would have meant something different — agility on the ground versus strength in the air, movement versus stability. Alguacil chose stability, at least on this one night.

The fourth layer — the Europa League goal. In the 2-1 comeback against Jagiellonia, the equaliser came from González's boot. This fact is easily missed, but it means something deep: the player who sits on the bench in a title-race derby is the one who brings the team back on a European night. A forward's value is never measured only by minutes; it is measured by those few moments when the team is in the most danger. González has proven at least once that he can burn in such a moment.

Together these four layers form a picture: González remains in the new coach's plans, but is not the first-choice central forward. He is probably the forward the coach will field in specific situations — home matches, home possession, a tired opposition defence — and keep on the bench in hard, physical, opponent-specific games. This is certainly no insult. But it is a clear hierarchy.

Off-Ball, Biomechanics and an Unfinished Run

I came to football from covering track and field, so my eye goes less to the ball and more to how people move. Football is a language of intervals; the crowd only hears the nouns, and misses the verbs. Who received the ball, who scored — these are nouns. But who moved when, who stopped where, who dragged a defender to open space — these are verbs, and here lies the real game.

González's problem is probably not in the nouns but in the verbs. In the Mendilibar system a forward needed a fast, straight, explosive first few steps in the transition moment. In Alguacil's patient positional system a forward needs something else: waiting patiently in space, hiding between the lines, leaping at the right moment in a press-trigger, and taking position before the ball arrives. These two demands are not the same. One is winning by running; the other is laying a trap by standing and waiting.

Track and field taught me that speed and rhythm are two different things. What wins a sprinter the 100 metres is not only top speed — it is the curve of acceleration, the control of deceleration, and not losing rhythm mid-race. The same applies to forwards. González may still be at his best in that acceleration moment, but Alguacil is playing a game of patience, where what matters is deceleration and positional patience. Biomechanically speaking, he is a player who glows while moving but becomes invisible while standing. If standing still is the value in the new system, invisibility becomes a curse.

The mud remembers every lane I never finished. A forward's career holds similarly unfinished runs — the match where you could have proven yourself but never got the chance. González's bench seats are unfinished lanes. Only a different pitch, different mud.

Comparison: Mouandilmadji versus González

Hierarchy is best understood through comparison, and the derby eleven offers exactly that. Mouandilmadji started; González sat. From this single decision one can say that in Alguacil's current plan, the first choice in central attack is Mouandilmadji. This is not a final verdict, because one match is not a season. But it is a direction.

The question should be: why? Three possible answers. First, physical presence. In derby matches, especially in the Greek top battle, a coach often wants a strong, ball-holding, aerially competitive No.9 — someone who can push a defender and hold a second ball. Second, positional discipline. In Alguacil's system a forward must stay in defined areas, otherwise the whole press structure collapses. Third, opponent-specific planning. Against Panathinaikos's type of defence, Mouandilmadji's profile may simply fit better.

I want to stress — none of these three causes is confirmed. They are inferences, because I have no xG, no xA, no pressing data, no positional data. A tactical verdict cannot be built from three matches' worth of minutes. This is my hesitation, and this is the limit of honest journalism.

The Light of Jagiellonia

One fact is easily lost and worth remembering: González scored in Europe under Alguacil. An equaliser in a 2-1 comeback. Such goals carry a different value. They sometimes save a team, sometimes buy a coach's trust, sometimes hold a player's own morale together. A player who brings a team back on a hard night is not usually forgotten entirely by a coach.

This Europa League goal is therefore a kind of bank balance for González. In the Greek league he may currently be on the bench, but on a European night, where rotation is natural and the opponent is different, the coach has a reason to use him. That reason is his biggest hope over the next few weeks.

Contrarian Angle: The Trap of Haste, and a Date Discrepancy

Now the most important warning of this story. To conclude that González is 'lost' is not supported by three matches — especially at a time when the new coach is himself searching for his system. A team that has just won a derby gives the coach no reason to break it. Few coaches dare to change a winning eleven. In this situation González's most likely route back is rotation, the cup, and European nights.

Here a factual problem must be stated openly, because I got stuck verifying it myself. The source from which this timeline comes states that Alguacil took charge on 10 September 2026. But by the current schedule in my hands, that date is in the future. This is an internal inconsistency, and it should not enter the story unverified. I write it openly here, because a reader's trust is a journalist's greatest asset, and a wrong date eats that asset. A source marked 'None' — one with no original attribution — cannot support a decision, especially in this age of transfer-window noise.

And this is where the transfer window enters. In this market the scarcest thing is information; the most abundant is noise. Agents generate rumours, media print the rumours, and then the rumours behave like truth. A player sits on the bench for three matches and headlines are born — 'agent active', 'leaving in January' — while behind them lie only three matches of minutes. Player agents are football's biggest hidden cost; the noise they generate distorts the whole market's value. With González, we should stop before that noise begins and look at the numbers.

Reading this bench chapter also raises load management. Clubs now hide much behind the phrase 'load management' — sometimes genuine physical care, sometimes the fatigue of commercial tours, sometimes a tactic to silence an unhappy forward. Zero minutes in one match does not always mean injury, and does not always mean tactics. The truth sits somewhere in between, and knowing it requires a long relationship with the player, not just a scoresheet.

González's commercial weight in the Mexican market is also a silent pressure. A club knows what questions arise in a country's media when a Mexican forward is left on the bench. This creates an indirect pressure on the coach — a commercial pressure, not a tactical one. The two are different, but in González's case they are rolling in together.

Forward Look: The Night of Marseille

So the most important match now comes — Olympique de Marseille in the Europa League. On European nights a coach usually rotates; there is more freedom to try something different than in the weekly league. This is González's most realistic chance to return. If he gets minutes against Marseille and performs, the bench story can turn again. If he stays at zero, the question sharpens.

Mbappe moved before the pass, and the stadium learned to see. To succeed, González must do exactly that — move long before the ball arrives, and make that verb visible to the coach's eye. Because in the nouns he already has a goal to his name; the rest is the verb.

In my notebook I wrote the questions for the coming weeks: Will González start against Marseille? Was the derby omission truly tactical, or physical? And the biggest question — is there room for a patient, positional forward in Alguacil's Olympiacos? The league will not answer this. Time will.

I know a bench seat is never a final verdict. The mud remembers every lane no one finished; but the mud also knows that some return from those unfinished lanes — perhaps in a different rhythm, perhaps on a different pitch. Will the ant find the crack again? That is what we watch for now.