There is a particular kind of nervousness that only makes sense if you support a big club, and my Colo-Colo have handed it to me again. We are top of the Liga de Primera by a distance that looks almost rude on the table. Thirteen wins, a goal difference stacked in our favour, a lead over Universidad Católica and Universidad de Chile that you have to squint at to believe. And yet here I am at the bottom of the world, coffee going cold at breakfast, feeling like something is about to go wrong. Being a hincha is not rational. It never was.

The lead is real, and it is enormous

Let me enjoy the good part first, because we earned it. Fernando Ortiz, the Argentine who took the bench and got very little credit for it early on, has us playing like the biggest club in the country is supposed to play: front foot, no draws, just wins and the odd loss when we take our foot off. Everton got beaten. Limache got beaten. The run has been long enough that the rest of the league stopped pretending they were going to catch us in the short term. When your nearest rivals are more than ten points back with the season past its halfway mark, that is not form, that is a gap.

If you grew up on South American football, you know a domestic title never fully heals the wound of a continental exit, and this is where I have to be honest with you: we are out of the Copa Libertadores. The league is ours to lose, but the Libertadores, the tournament that actually makes a Chilean chest puff out on the continent, is being carried by other people this year. That is a story for another day. Today the table is a gift, and I am choosing to unwrap it.

So why the nerves? Look at the transfer window

Here is the thing gnawing at me. The Chilean transfer window (the libro de pases, if you want the term the abuelos use) closes on 13 August. That is days away. And what has my club, the runaway leader, the one with the biggest budget and the biggest noise, actually brought in? Almost nothing that has walked through the door.

The one announced name is a goalkeeper, Vozinha, the Cape Verde international. And if you followed this year’s World Cup, you will remember Cape Verde were one of the great little stories of the whole tournament, so on paper I like it. The problem is that the president announced him more than a week ago and the man has not even arrived to do his medical. Visa sorted, work permit sorted, and still no date. In football, a signing you have announced but cannot physically produce is not a signing, it is a rumour wearing a nicer shirt.

Ortiz has been asked about the silence and he has not hidden behind it. His line, more or less, is that they will not sign just to sign, that bringing a player in only to quiet the fans is exactly what he refuses to do, and that the board is working in its own time. I respect that. I genuinely do. A squad that is winning does not need to be torn apart to please talk radio. But I have supported this club long enough to know the other side of that coin: the window shuts, the injuries come, the schedule bites, and in October you are staring at a thin bench wondering why nobody moved in August when the league was already won and the excuses were all used up.

What is actually coming, and when to watch from NZ

The next test is away to Unión La Calera on Sunday 9 August. For those of us watching from New Zealand, that means an early Monday morning here, kicking off around 9:30am NZT on 10 August, which for once is a civilised hour to have a coffee and a Cacique win with. Away from home again, on a ground where we have dropped points before, so it is not the gimme the table suggests.

And then the one I am already circling: the Superclásico against Universidad de Chile on Sunday 23 August at the Estadio Nacional. This is the fixture that does not care about the league table. You can be twenty points clear and still have your whole season poisoned by ninety minutes against La U, or you can be limping and have the entire year redeemed by one. From here it lands on a Monday morning again, so clear your calendar, because a Superclásico is worth losing sleep over even at this distance.

So that is where my Colo-Colo sit: comfortably top, quietly worrying, one big signing that is more promise than presence, and a derby that could define the mood of the whole run-in. Winning the league from the front is supposed to feel calm. It never does. Not for us, not for me, not at this hour. Dale, Colo, and please, get the goalkeeper on a plane.