The Zamora Gazette
Market10 Jul 2034
Facundo Molina 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 Zamora can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings10 Jul 2034
Age has not caught Cristian Díaz yet — 7.94
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.94 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market10 Jul 2034
Only the photograph left for José Flores
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. José Flores will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Zamora the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad10 Jul 2034
Tempers go at Zamora
Isaí Valladares 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.
Match8 Jul 2034
Cristian Díaz sends Zamora past Deportivo Tachira
It finished 1‑0, and it was Cristian Díaz’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Zamora.
Squad10 Jul 2034
Thiago Mejías 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.
Squad10 Jul 2034
When it matters, Isaí Valladares plays
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.
Squad10 Jul 2034
Bruno Oldani gets it from the manager
“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.
Market10 Jul 2034
Estudiantes de Caracas expected to open talks for Carlos Rosales
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Zamora will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
In brief
- Player ratings Nobody could get near Alexis Orellano
- Player ratings Isaí Valladares shuts the door
- Market Darwin Rincon leaves for nothing