Marked for Rodrigo Cacho Sousa
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
The deal with Atlético Tucumán is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: River Plate keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Sebastián Lojas 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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Rodrigo Cacho Sousa is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Rodrigo Migone 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.
Transfer targets11 Jan 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
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 Deportivo Municipal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 21 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brayan Velarde was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad12 Oct 2026
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 33 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Market12 Oct 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Deportivo Municipal, another week without a signature from Brayan Velarde.
The dugout12 Oct 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad17 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match12 Aug 2026
Alianza Atletico go through and Deportivo Municipal go home, 1‑2 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Squad17 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 Deportivo Municipal this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
The formation has left José Cotrina behind
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Deportivo Municipal will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Market17 Aug 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Paolo Lapadula left the room before anybody could ask which.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
Alejandro Duarte has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Deportivo Municipal will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Jordy Santa María, and the manager let it.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.