Marked for Daniel Padilla
From our football correspondent
Steady
Boardroom14 Dec 2026
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad14 Dec 2026
14 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad14 Dec 2026
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market30 Nov 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Luis Del Pino Mago 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Eduardo Fereira 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market2 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 The request is on a desk at Caracas, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad2 Nov 2026
The manager makes an example of Juan Vegas
“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.
Squad2 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 Caracas, and both men came out saying it was fine.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Oct 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 Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Oct 2026
A window away with the national side, and a shirt at Caracas that briefly doubles as an advertisement. A call-up flatters the player and the club that built him in the same breath.
Market12 Oct 2026
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Daniel Padilla may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market5 Oct 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 Caracas, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Caracas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luis Del Pino Mago 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Francisco La Mantia 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Caracas can pretend not to have heard.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Caracas training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luis Del Pino Mago 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The captaincy has been taken off Mauricio Márquez. Caracas will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 30. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market10 Aug 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad10 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 Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market10 Aug 2026
48 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Squad10 Aug 2026
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Caracas know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Irving Gudiño, and the manager let it.
Match8 Aug 2026
It needed Michael Covea to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Mineros de Guayana, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Market10 Aug 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Caracas, another week without a signature from Ángel Figueroa.
Squad10 Aug 2026
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.