Marked for Manuel Murillo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match6 Feb 2027
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Patriotas, and it could have been more.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.16, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
No sign of nerves from Farid Tamayo at 19 — 8.02
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Farid Tamayo did not need any: 8.02, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad8 Feb 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 Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match6 Feb 2027
Whatever happens, Cortulua 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.
The terraces8 Feb 2027
At 19 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Felipe Ospina 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.
Market8 Feb 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Manuel Murillo has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Cortulua.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad16 Nov 2026
Edwin Zapata 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 Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Felipe Ospina 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Manuel Murillo asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad9 Nov 2026
Edwin Zapata 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at Cortulua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Felipe Ospina 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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Manuel Murillo knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Manuel Murillo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Nov 2026
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Oscar Sinisterra is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Cortulua will explain it as a decision about the team, and it may well be one. A dressing room has never once read it that way.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Sep 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Edwin Zapata 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Cortulua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Felipe Ospina 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.54 on the card, and the Cortulua support went home talking about one name.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Manuel Murillo 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.
Match26 Sep 2026
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Once Caldas defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 65. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match19 Sep 2026
Nowhere to hide for Cortulua
0‑3 against Deportivo Cali, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Edwin Zapata 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 Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
“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.
Boardroom21 Sep 2026
Nobody left the Cortulua 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad17 Aug 2026
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Oscar Sinisterra: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Match12 Aug 2026
Cortulua bow out of the cup
Alianza Petrolera go through and Cortulua go home, 3‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Miguel Quiroga, 33, rolls back the years — 8.07
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.07 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Wilmar Muriel 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.
Match15 Aug 2026
Deportes Tolima made Cortulua work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Match15 Aug 2026
Cortulua settle it inside twenty minutes
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Deportes Tolima spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Marked 8.30 — 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 ratings17 Aug 2026
Ninety minutes of Cristian Giraldo at his very best
Marked 8.18. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Cortulua.