Marked for Daniel Castillo
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match24 Feb 2027
Deportivo Tachira ended it 0‑3. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 37 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad1 Mar 2027
A one-man rearguard from Osnel García
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.
The terraces1 Mar 2027
0-3, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
Match27 Feb 2027
The wait goes on for Llaneros
5 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
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Llaneros may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad1 Mar 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 Llaneros this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
A hand in 2 of them from Diego Soteldo — 7.91
Marked 7.91. There is a kind of forward whose value only shows up when you count what he was involved in rather than what he finished, and this is the day that argument makes itself.
Match27 Feb 2027
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Llaneros and Zamora in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad18 Jan 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 Llaneros this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market18 Jan 2027
The Luis Moreno conversation is coming
Everyone has stopped pretending: Aston Villa will make the call about Luis Moreno this week. Llaneros have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Julio Da Silva 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad14 Dec 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Richard Ferraresi
59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Llaneros lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match11 Dec 2026
Llaneros come up short in Europe
0‑1 away to the standard of Plaza Colonia. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
Market14 Dec 2026
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Luis Moreno reports back to Llaneros with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Match11 Dec 2026
4 matches without a win for Llaneros
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Llaneros are no longer polite ones.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Oscar Rincon 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.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Luis Moreno has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Llaneros 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.
Market14 Dec 2026
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Sergio Soteldo has his answer from Llaneros; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Player ratings14 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 11. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.