Marked for Daniel Arango
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match14 Aug 2028
Nea Salamis are in real trouble now
Position 13, 16 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Market14 Aug 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Nikolas Giallouros is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Alberto Varo 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 Aug 2028
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 5 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Squad14 Aug 2028
David Goldar 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad17 Jul 2028
The words a physio says slowly. 37 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.
Match17 Jul 2028
Every point is an argument now for Nea Salamis
Position 13 and 16 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.
Market17 Jul 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Nea Salamis can pretend not to have heard.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad17 Jul 2028
Alberto Varo 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.
Squad17 Jul 2028
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad9 Aug 2027
19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Atletico Venezuela lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Hassan Al-Shamrani has just signed for Atletico Venezuela, and for once the answer mattered.
Market9 Aug 2027
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Alejandro Giménez wants continental football; whether Atletico Venezuela can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad9 Aug 2027
13 shut-outs and counting. Goalkeepers are only noticed when they fail, and Alejandro Giménez has given nobody the chance.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Fernando Murillo 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.
Player ratings9 Aug 2027
Camilo Mina was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.39. 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.
Player ratings9 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market9 Aug 2027
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Jan 2027
Carlos Rondon damages knee ligaments — 93 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 93 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.
Market4 Jan 2027
Daniel Arango hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Atletico Venezuela can pretend not to have heard.
Market4 Jan 2027
The bid was some way short and Atletico Venezuela did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.