“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Zulia have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
David 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.
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.
In brief
SquadWords at Zulia training over how hard people work
The words a physio says slowly. 52 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.
2‑1 against Defensa y Justicia, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. David Gonzalez wants continental football; whether Zulia can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
David 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Sergio Ramirez has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
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.
David 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Sergio Ramirez has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Andres Rondon was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.18. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.