Marked for Javier Castillo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market5 Jul 2027
Cortulua arrived with $310.0K and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
Market5 Jul 2027
Once Caldas come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Valledupar did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market5 Jul 2027
Freddy Moreno hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Valledupar can pretend not to have heard.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Freddy Moreno: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Valledupar have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The terraces5 Jul 2027
Valledupar sell a favourite for $310.0K
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Jefferson Romero was one of the reasons people came, and $310.0K does not replace that by itself.
Squad5 Jul 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 Valledupar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Brayan Murillo 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.
Boardroom5 Jul 2027
Valledupar sign 6 boys into the academy
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
Market5 Jul 2027
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Valledupar will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Jun 2027
The bid was some way short and Valledupar did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Wilmar Uribe: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Valledupar have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market28 Jun 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Valledupar can pretend not to have heard.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Hector Hernandez 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 Jun 2027
Words at Valledupar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Brayan Murillo 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.
Loan watch28 Jun 2027
“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 Valledupar, and 0 appearances in 25 say he has earned the hearing.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings8 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 45. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match6 Mar 2027
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Valledupar scored in the 90th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Squad8 Mar 2027
A fracture rules Esteban Buitrago out for 67 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Valledupar will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Sergio Ferrari 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.
Squad8 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.
Match6 Mar 2027
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Hector Hernandez. 1‑0 against Leones, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 33. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad8 Feb 2027
A fracture rules Esteban Buitrago out for 95 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Valledupar will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom8 Feb 2027
The Valledupar board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Sergio Ferrari 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.
Match6 Feb 2027
1‑2 to Fortaleza CEIF, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad8 Feb 2027
42 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Market8 Feb 2027
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Hector Hernandez has his answer from Valledupar; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Squad8 Feb 2027
The manager makes an example of Hugo Uribe
“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.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Sergio Ferrari did the work nobody counts — 7.56
11 combined actions and 7.56. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Jan 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 124 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market11 Jan 2027
Jose Muriel hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Valledupar can pretend not to have heard.
Squad11 Jan 2027
36 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Sergio Ferrari 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
The medical room confirms 70 days on the sidelines for Javier Castillo, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Market11 Jan 2027
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Sergio Ferrari signs something — a contract at Valledupar or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market31 Aug 2026
“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 Valledupar, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad31 Aug 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 Valledupar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Duvan Cordoba 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.