The words a physio says slowly. 36 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
9 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Martín Ojeda 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.
8 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Cortulua can tell you which week it ends in.
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.
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.
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.
The words a physio says slowly. 37 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Juan Pablo Otálvaro, and the manager let it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Diego Sanchez
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Diego Sanchez has come out of that comparison in the side, and Cortulua have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
A 3‑2 win over Alianza Petrolera, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
The 2-goal deficit was real and so was the recovery. Mateo Uribe was at the centre of it, Alianza Petrolera were at the end of it, and everybody who left early will hear about this one for years.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Miguel Giraldo, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 8.31
A mark of 8.31 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Martín Ojeda 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.
At 20 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.