Marked for Marcelo Ortiz
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market16 Nov 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Audax Italiano, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Marcelo Ortiz and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Franco Troyansky was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Audax Italiano, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
The manager makes Bryan Soto a promise
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Audax Italiano. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Word from the training ground: Cristóbal Muñoz
The sharpest man in every session this week, by all accounts. Lines like this run the week before somebody’s run in the side begins.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jonathan Villagrán is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Matías Sánchez 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Michael Vadulli was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Bryan Soto gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Gonzalo Ontivero is on it.
Market12 Oct 2026
The name of Diego Coelho keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Audax Italiano say nothing, which says plenty.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Sep 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Marcelo Ortiz 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
At 18 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Franco Troyansky 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.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Somebody watched every match in the division at the weekend and decided he was the best thing in any of them. A small honour, and most careers end without one.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match19 Aug 2026
Union La Calera ended it 1‑1. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Tomás Ahumada decides it from twelve yards
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Squad24 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Audax Italiano this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match22 Aug 2026
The unbeaten run reaches 6. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Federico Mateos 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.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Nicolás Aedo was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.19. 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.
Match22 Aug 2026
Behind, and beaten by any honest reading, until minute 90. O'Higgins had the points in their pocket and a corner of the ground still believed, which is generally when it happens.
Match19 Aug 2026
Late, late show earns Audax Italiano a point
Minute 87, against Union La Calera, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match8 Aug 2026
5‑2, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 9.29 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad10 Aug 2026
The match ball belongs to Diego Coelho, whose 3 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Marcelo Ortiz 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.
Match8 Aug 2026
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 7 goals between Audax Italiano and Union Espanola, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.68, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market10 Aug 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ivan Riquelme is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Aug 2026
6 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Market3 Aug 2026
The offer from Hawke's Bay United for Favian Loyola was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Marcelo Ortiz and Audax Italiano agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Diego Coelho and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Federico Mateos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market3 Aug 2026
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Audax Italiano can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Audax Italiano, another week without a signature from Raimundo Rebolledo.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clock runs on Marcelo Ortiz's contract
24 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.
Match1 Aug 2026
It needed Paolo Guajardo to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Colo-Colo, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager’s verdict
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Looking ahead
A reunion for Ariel Uribe
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The dugout
Oliver Rojas does not fit this one