Marked for Germain Torcate
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market25 Jan 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match23 Jan 2027
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Deportivo Lara are no longer polite ones.
Squad25 Jan 2027
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
José Rondón, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.60
A mark of 7.60 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Ronaldo Peña 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.
Boardroom25 Jan 2027
4 academy players handed senior numbers at Deportivo Lara
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Market25 Jan 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Sergio Otero has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Market25 Jan 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Rafael Rondon has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market25 Jan 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Salomon Ramirez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Jan 2027
Henry Pernía 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
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.
Squad11 Jan 2027
The manager makes an example of Germain Torcate
“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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad19 Oct 2026
Ronaldo Peña 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Joel Cáceres gets it from the manager
“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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Germain Torcate has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad10 Aug 2026
Henry Pernía in a row with a teammate
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 Lara this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match8 Aug 2026
Luis Annese scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to Zamora, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Market10 Aug 2026
48 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Franco Carretero dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Squad10 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Germain Torcate
“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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Santiago Ortíz is the weekend's best young player
At 20 he is being measured against the rest of the division's kids and coming out in front. The senior version of this award is where the club would like this to lead.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Marked 5.43. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
5.66 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.