Marked for Daniel Castillo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market28 Sep 2026
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Fernando Murillo wants continental football; whether Zulia can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad28 Sep 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 Zulia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
When it matters, Oscar Otero plays
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Zulia
Daniel Castillo 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 Sep 2026
Cristian Arango has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Zulia will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Junior Cordova knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Zulia, and both men came out saying it was fine.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
“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.
Market14 Sep 2026
Daniel Castillo wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Zulia hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Miguel Ferraresi has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Zulia will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Aug 2026
José Ferrer 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 Zulia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Aug 2026
When it matters, Oscar Otero plays
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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Public backing, and the sort that costs a manager something if it turns out to be wrong. Daniel Castillo has been told in front of everybody that the shirt is his.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad17 Aug 2026
4 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Match12 Aug 2026
Zulia out of the cup
Estudiantes de Merida ended it 4‑4. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Match12 Aug 2026
A 2-goal lead gone for Zulia
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Estudiantes de Merida kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Zulia will be asked about the last half hour all week.
Squad17 Aug 2026
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Market17 Aug 2026
Zulia say no — this time
The offer from Al-Qadisiyah for Miguel Casseres was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
No sign of nerves from Miguel Ferraresi at 19 — 8.03
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Miguel Ferraresi did not need any: 8.03, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad17 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 Zulia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match15 Aug 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Daniel Castillo. 2‑1 against Metropolitanos, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 64. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market10 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Zulia did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market10 Aug 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Daniel Castillo and Zulia agree another 4 years.
Squad10 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 Zulia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Zulia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Fernando 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market3 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Zulia heard it as anything else.
Market3 Aug 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Zulia
Daniel Castillo 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Junior Cordova 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
This league is too small for Luis Ruíz
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Zulia will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Rafael Cordova and Zulia agree another 2 years.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
A mark of 7.99, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Match1 Aug 2026
It needed Gabriel Ponce to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Zamora, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 12. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.