Marked for Emilxon Rodríguez
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad12 Apr 2032
57 days out for Wilfred Correa after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Portuguesa will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Match10 Apr 2032
Mineros de Guayana will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Portuguesa were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings12 Apr 2032
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.70, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings12 Apr 2032
A defender's goal wins it for Portuguesa — 7.93
1 for Emilxon Rodríguez, marked 7.93, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Player ratings12 Apr 2032
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad12 Apr 2032
Jonathan Cañete 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.
Squad12 Apr 2032
Words at Portuguesa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lautaro Lovazzano 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 dugout12 Apr 2032
Yhonatann Yustiz 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.
The dugout12 Apr 2032
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Interim Coach kept it short after the 3‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Mar 2032
A fracture rules Wilfred Correa out for 99 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Portuguesa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match25 Feb 2032
The small margins put Portuguesa out
Out, 1‑1 to Estudiantes de Merida, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Squad1 Mar 2032
1 kept out from twelve yards, and a stadium that will describe each of them for twenty years. A goalkeeper needs one night like this in a career, and this was it.
Player ratings1 Mar 2032
No sign of nerves from Carlos Martinez at 18 — 7.70
The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Carlos Martinez did not need any: 7.70, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Player ratings1 Mar 2032
Successful dribbles: 24. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad1 Mar 2032
Jonathan Cañete 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.
Squad1 Mar 2032
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Luis Moreno Quero and Portuguesa agree another 3 years.
Loan watch1 Mar 2032
“I watch every Portuguesa game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Zulia runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Match28 Feb 2032
0‑2 to Deportivo La Guaira, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad25 Aug 2031
The knee: Héber García out for 110 days
110 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Portuguesa lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Market25 Aug 2031
Leonel Moreno has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Portuguesa they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad25 Aug 2031
Keiver Zúñiga 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.
Squad25 Aug 2031
Lautaro Lovazzano 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.
Squad25 Aug 2031
19 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
The dugout25 Aug 2031
“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.