“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 The request is on a desk at Trujillanos, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trujillanos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
10 days since the seat came open, a list of names doing the rounds, and nobody has signed anything. Every week this drags on the shortlist gets shorter.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Words at Trujillanos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cristian Cruz 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.
Leomar Mosquera 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.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Cristian Cruz 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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Matheus Aluísio has written the date down.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trujillanos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Trujillanos will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
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.
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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Trujillanos are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
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.
The best deals are the ones the accountants never notice. Rodolfo Fontes arrives at Trujillanos with his wages the only cost and something to prove the only clause.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 20 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Boardroom24 Jul 2028
Deadline passes with 3 signed and 4 gone
That is the business done at Trujillanos until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
4 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.
Leomar Mosquera 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.
Luis Mina scored, and precious little else went right: 1‑2 to UCV, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Words at Trujillanos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matheus Aluísio 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 supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Fabricio Díaz 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.
Marked 8.15 — 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.
Position 13 and 7 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Leomar Mosquera 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.
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad13 Mar 2028
Cristian Cruz 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 6 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Leomar Mosquera 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Trujillanos has been clear about where Enderson Abreu stands, which is more than many ever get.
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.
The dugout7 Feb 2028
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑2 Gabriel Savarino left the room before anybody could ask which.
Successful dribbles: 12. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
In brief
The dugoutÓscar Rojas has become a man the manager trusts
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.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Henrry Díaz has written the date down.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Andres Machis trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The shrug has gone, the language is coming, and he now argues in training like somebody who expects to be here next year. Half a signing's value is this and none of it appears on a fee.
20 goals in 29 games at Barquisimeto — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Trujillanos updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Steven Pabón 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.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Jhonny González is on it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Trujillanos will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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 Trujillanos, and it is not being withdrawn.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Trujillanos have done the hard part with Monagas, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Deportivo Tachira is saying, and nobody at Trujillanos is enjoying the guessing.
Rosmel Villaneuva 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.
Trujillanos asked and Union Magdalena said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Trujillanos training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jhonny González 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 36 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Trujillanos this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Cristóbal Sepúlveda has, at Trujillanos, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Rayo Zuliano paid $77.0K and Trujillanos took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
A loan enquiry to Deportivo Tachira: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Cristóbal Sepúlveda is 18, and Trujillanos have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
$5.9M on the table at Estudiantes de Merida. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
4 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
1 for Leandro Fioravanti, marked 7.66, 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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $500.0K — a club that wants Luis Martell enough to be asked twice.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Emmanuel Chacón has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
The offer went to Anzoátegui this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
In brief
Transfer targetsNo deal for Luis Martell at that price