Marked for Hodei Barbarín
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match13 Mar 2027
10 matches without a win for Castellón
The run now stands at 10, and the questions being asked around Castellón are no longer polite ones.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Jérémy Mellot 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.
Match13 Mar 2027
1‑2 to Almería, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad15 Mar 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Diego Barri's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Hodei Barbarín 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Jan 2027
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Castellón will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Market4 Jan 2027
Juanjo Nieto hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Castellón can pretend not to have heard.
Squad4 Jan 2027
A season average of 7.54 with 10 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Jérémy Mellot 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.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Javi Montero 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.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
A performance of 9.30 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match2 Jan 2027
A 2‑1 win over Ceuta, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.59, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Market4 Jan 2027
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Castellón, another week without a signature from Hodei Barbarín.