Marked for Irving Martínez
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market6 Sep 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Chiapas waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Leon is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market6 Sep 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.
Boardroom6 Sep 2027
Leon close the window on a squad of their own making
10 in and 14 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Market6 Sep 2027
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Leon they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad6 Sep 2027
A falling-out at Leon
Ismael Díaz and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Player ratings6 Sep 2027
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Santiago Colombatto 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.
Match4 Sep 2027
Diber Cambindo scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to Cruz Azul, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
The dugout6 Sep 2027
The manager makes an example of Julio González
“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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match7 Aug 2027
3‑0, and Nicolás Fonseca took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Leon tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Market9 Aug 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Chiapas waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Leon is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market9 Aug 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Leon, and it is not being withdrawn.
Player ratings9 Aug 2027
Up for the corner, and Fernando Beltrán delivers — 7.92
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Fernando Beltrán scored, was marked 7.92, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Squad9 Aug 2027
A falling-out at Leon
Ismael Díaz and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match7 Aug 2027
Whatever happens, Leon do not lose
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad9 Aug 2027
A row about effort at Leon
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Santiago Colombatto was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market9 Aug 2027
The phone has started ringing about Fernando Hernandez again, and this time the name on the line is Dorados. Leon are listening politely and promising nothing.
Player ratings9 Aug 2027
A performance of 8.32 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad12 Jul 2027
35 days out for Hector Sanchez after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Leon will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market12 Jul 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Puebla waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Leon is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
The terraces12 Jul 2027
Leon sell a favourite for $7.7M
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Salvador Reyes was one of the reasons people came, and $7.7M does not replace that by itself.
Market12 Jul 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Leon is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market12 Jul 2027
Toluca come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Leon did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad12 Jul 2027
A falling-out at Leon
Ismael Díaz and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad12 Jul 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Nicolás Vallejo commits to Leon for another 5 years.
Squad12 Jul 2027
Words at Leon training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Santiago Colombatto 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad22 Mar 2027
Ismael Díaz 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 Leon this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Irving Martínez is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Leon training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Pablo Domínguez 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 dugout22 Mar 2027
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
Paul Bellón has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Leon 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.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nicolás Fonseca trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market22 Mar 2027
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Diber Cambindo signs something — a contract at Leon or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Market22 Mar 2027
No place for Romeo Padrón in the plan
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Romeo Padrón has his answer from Leon; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Squad22 Mar 2027
He goes off to be somebody else’s player for a fortnight. Leon lose him for the window and would like him returned in the condition he left.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad28 Dec 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 21 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Match26 Dec 2026
Leon taken apart
1‑4 to Monterrey, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Market28 Dec 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Leon can pretend not to have heard.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words exchanged at Leon
Jordi Cortizo 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
At 22 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Leon training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Pablo Domínguez 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.
Market28 Dec 2026
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Leon can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Boardroom28 Dec 2026
Nobody left the Leon 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.
Loan watch28 Dec 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Leon, and 3 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.