Marked for Patrick Preciado
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Sep 2026
89 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Deportivo Pasto lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Match19 Sep 2026
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Jaguares, and it could have been more.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Age has not caught Matías Pisano yet — 7.83
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.83 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match19 Sep 2026
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Deportivo Pasto have 3 straight wins of it.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Mayer Gil and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
One of those days for Mayer Gil
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.15, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Ninety minutes of Esneyder Mena at his very best
Marked 8.01. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Deportivo Pasto.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑0, Francisco Vargas could afford to be generous.
The dugout21 Sep 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Sep 2026
Julián Quiñones damages knee ligaments — 96 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 96 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.
Match12 Sep 2026
Junior made Deportivo Pasto work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Marked 8.19 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Santiago Jiménez was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.06. 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.
The dugout14 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Johan Portilla 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.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
“That is what I want every week. Not the result, the way they went about it.” The manager, after 2‑0, already talking about the next one.
Squad14 Sep 2026
No place for Brayan Gómez in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Deportivo Pasto are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 13. 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad7 Sep 2026
Julián Quiñones damages knee ligaments — 104 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 104 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.
Squad7 Sep 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 Pasto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Mateo Garavito has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Santiago Jiménez has moved up it.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Enrique Serje’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Deportivo Pasto needing him to play as if none of it matters.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
Ronald Mayo has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Deportivo Pasto 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad24 Aug 2026
Julián Quiñones damages knee ligaments — 123 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 123 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.
Match22 Aug 2026
0‑1 against Independiente Medellin, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Squad24 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.
Market24 Aug 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.
Match22 Aug 2026
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
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 Deportivo Pasto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout24 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 0‑1 Francisco Vargas left the room before anybody could ask which.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 15. 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.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
Every touch weighed, every quote parsed, every mistake replayed. Some players grow into that; some are quietly finished by it; nobody knows which until afterwards.