Marked for Vicenzo Macchia
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match1 Oct 2026
0‑3 against Atlético Mineiro. The honest reading is not that the players were poor; it is that the distance between this club and that one is currently measured in things money takes years to buy.
Squad5 Oct 2026
8 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.
Match1 Oct 2026
4 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Valentín Rodríguez 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.
Squad5 Oct 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Liverpool Montevideo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Zabala 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.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
“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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Nobody left the Liverpool Montevideo dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.75 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.14 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Diego Zabala, 34, rolls back the years — 8.04
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.04 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 26. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Match29 Aug 2026
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Valentín Rodríguez 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
Upbeat
Match19 Aug 2026
A 1‑0 win over Sud America, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Marked 7.71 at 21, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Market24 Aug 2026
Changchun Yatai are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Liverpool Montevideo will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Liverpool Montevideo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Zabala 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.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad24 Aug 2026
200 times in these colours, in all weathers and under four or five different managers. That kind of service is quietly disappearing from the game.
Match22 Aug 2026
4 matches without defeat, and then Penarol. Nobody at the ground pretended it would go on forever; nobody expected it to stop here either.
The dugout24 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Lucas Acosta
“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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Vicenzo Macchia and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.