Marked for Benicio Blanco
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Sep 2026
Benicio Blanco 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 Sep 2026
Words at Llaneros training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gabriel Ramirez 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 Sep 2026
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
Upbeat
Match2 Sep 2026
Llaneros bow out of the cup
Estudiantes de Merida go through and Llaneros go home, 1‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Carlos Herrera, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.81
A mark of 7.81 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Market7 Sep 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Llaneros, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad7 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 Llaneros this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Cristian Osorio, and the manager let it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Salomon Rosales 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
Triumph
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 40. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match12 Aug 2026
Llaneros march on in the cup
Caracas are out and Llaneros go through, 3‑2 the final word. The bracket opens up a little, and everyone allows themselves a look at it.
Match12 Aug 2026
At 2 goals adrift this was a formality, and the formality lasted right up until it did not. Llaneros found something the first half had given no notice of, and Caracas could not hold what they had.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.46 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Match15 Aug 2026
Llaneros cannot stop winning
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Erick Sarmiento 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.
Match15 Aug 2026
A 2‑1 win over Portuguesa, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Benicio Blanco, and the manager let it.