Marked for Nicolas Muriel
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad7 Sep 2026
Daniel Castillo damages knee ligaments — 33 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 33 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A fracture rules Carlos Lopez out for 22 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cortulua will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Nicolas Muriel did the work nobody counts — 6.54
14 combined actions and 6.54. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Match5 Sep 2026
Beaten 0‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad7 Sep 2026
“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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Cortulua training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jose Mina 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 32. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.52, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad24 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 Cortulua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Oscar Caicedo 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Brian Palacios and Cortulua agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market3 Aug 2026
Cortulua say no — this time
The offer from Willem II for Duvan Cuadrado was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 27. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market3 Aug 2026
Jorge Lemos wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Cortulua hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Market3 Aug 2026
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Hugo Montero wants continental football; whether Cortulua can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Hugo Montero 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Jose Rodriguez
“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.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.05, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Leonardo Palacios commits to Cortulua for another 1 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Nicolas Muriel 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.