Marked for Luis Rosales
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match3 Apr 2027
The run now stands at 16, and the questions being asked around Estudiantes de Caracas are no longer polite ones.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Estudiantes de Caracas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad5 Apr 2027
Alejandro Gonzalez 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.
Match3 Apr 2027
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad5 Apr 2027
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Estudiantes de Caracas are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match6 Mar 2027
The run now stands at 12, and the questions being asked around Estudiantes de Caracas are no longer polite ones.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Estudiantes de Caracas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Mar 2027
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Estudiantes de Caracas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match27 Feb 2027
11 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.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Luis Rosales is the hero from the spot
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Luis Rosales: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
A brace, and Darwin Otero takes the afternoon — 8.01
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Darwin Otero provided it, and the 8.01 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Market1 Mar 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
Andres Martinez scored one and made one — 7.31
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.31, and 2 involvements.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Alejandro Savarino 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.
Match27 Feb 2027
Beaten 2‑3, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match6 Feb 2027
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Estudiantes de Caracas are no longer polite ones.
Market8 Feb 2027
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Rafael Rosales has his answer from Estudiantes de Caracas; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Squad8 Feb 2027
The manager makes an example of Luis Rosales
“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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Alejandro Casseres 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.
Squad8 Feb 2027
60 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Feb 2027
Richard Moreno damages knee ligaments — 19 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 19 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.
Match30 Jan 2027
6 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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad1 Feb 2027
A move Fabrizio Rama would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Fabrizio Rama is living that version at Estudiantes de Caracas, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Alejandro Savarino 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad10 Aug 2026
A one-man rearguard from Luis Rosales
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
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 Estudiantes de Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Juan Herrera 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.
Match8 Aug 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 12. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.