Marked for Daniel Sanchez
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Aug 2038
A knee injury of the worst kind for Segundo Fernández
86 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Alianza Petrolera lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match23 Aug 2038
21 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad23 Aug 2038
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Alianza Petrolera may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces29 Mar 2038
The mood at Alianza Petrolera has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Squad29 Mar 2038
Andrés Redín 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.
Squad29 Mar 2038
Camilo Durán 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.
Player ratings29 Mar 2038
Marked 8.52 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad29 Mar 2038
“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.
Player ratings29 Mar 2038
14 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Squad29 Mar 2038
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Player ratings29 Mar 2038
The one thing Andrés Redín could not do
Shots: 8, enough of them from close enough that a striker in form scores two. He is not a striker in form.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad14 Dec 2037
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Alianza Petrolera may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad14 Dec 2037
Andrés Redín 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 Alianza Petrolera this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 Dec 2037
Words at Alianza Petrolera training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Camilo Durán 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.
Squad14 Dec 2037
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Janeth Alemán commits to Alianza Petrolera for another 1 years.
Market14 Dec 2037
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Yojan Carrillo signs something — a contract at Alianza Petrolera or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match6 May 2037
A 1‑0 win over Deportes Tolima, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Match11 May 2037
Every point is an argument now for Alianza Petrolera
Position 20 and 6 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Squad11 May 2037
Camilo Durán 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 May 2037
Andrés Redín 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.
Match9 May 2037
Deportivo Pereira left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad11 May 2037
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ivan Mina and Alianza Petrolera agree another 1 years.
Squad11 May 2037
“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.
Player ratings11 May 2037
The afternoon belonged to Camilo Duque
7.98, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Alianza Petrolera had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Player ratings11 May 2037
15 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.