Guardado’s comments were typically along the lines of, “I’ve heard they were interested, but we haven’t been contacted.”

Martino may have explained why on Thursday:

“In reality this is something I’ve already talked about. He was one of the players that the team directors had discussed with me since the first day of the possibility of his arrival.

“A player of his hierarchy would have been a DP (Designated Player), so we began to evaluate other options at DPs and what area of the field we would like to use those DPs.

“It’s clear we opted to go for attacking players.”

The quote comes from Martino through a translator, so the context may not be 100 percent correct. But, it seems that the team did have an interest. If Martino was being prepped for the possibility of Guardado’s arrival, it seems that some sort of negotiations with Guardado’s agents did take place, but obviously nothing happened because the team instead signed Hector Villalba, Miguel Almiron and Martinez. It has no more DP slots available.

That doesn’t mean that Guardado couldn’t eventually join the team by buying down the contracts of one of the other players using Targeted Allocation Money, but it doesn’t seem likely.