Marked for Sergio Barajas
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces27 Sep 2027
Anger at Real Cartagena spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match27 Sep 2027
31 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Market27 Sep 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 The request is on a desk at Real Cartagena, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Juan David Rodríguez 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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Words at Real Cartagena training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cristian Graciano 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.
Match25 Sep 2027
Deportivo Pereira left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad27 Sep 2027
“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.
Player ratings27 Sep 2027
Marked 8.69 — 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 ratings27 Sep 2027
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad12 Apr 2027
A fracture rules Ronaldo Lora out for 74 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Real Cartagena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad12 Apr 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergio Barajas
19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Real Cartagena lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match12 Apr 2027
9 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Match10 Apr 2027
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad12 Apr 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Real Cartagena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match10 Apr 2027
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Real Cartagena can tell you which week it ends in.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Apr 2027
A fracture rules Ronaldo Lora out for 81 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Real Cartagena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad5 Apr 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergio Barajas
26 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Real Cartagena lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match3 Apr 2027
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Real Cartagena are no longer polite ones.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Sebastián Buitrago is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Match3 Apr 2027
0‑1 to Atletico Nacional, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad29 Mar 2027
A fracture rules Ronaldo Lora out for 88 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Real Cartagena will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad29 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergio Barajas
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Real Cartagena lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad29 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Real Cartagena this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
Defensive actions: 22, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Squad29 Mar 2027
“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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market11 Jan 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 Real Cartagena, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Fredy Montero 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
Sergio Barajas is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.