Marked for Michael Barragán
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Nov 2026
Julian Moreno damages knee ligaments — 16 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 16 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad23 Nov 2026
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Fortaleza CEIF will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Leonardo Pico 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 Oct 2026
74 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Fortaleza CEIF lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market5 Oct 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 Fortaleza CEIF can pretend not to have heard.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Leonardo Pico and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Market5 Oct 2026
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Jhon Balanta wants continental football; whether Fortaleza CEIF can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sebastián Herrera was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 314% of everything Fortaleza CEIF earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.