Claudio Mena

Left Forward - Iquique U18
5 Dec 2030
Thursday
Process

Marked for Claudio Mena

133 Edition

The Iquique Gazette

12 Feb 2029
From our football correspondent Crisis

Squad

A fracture rules Mauricio Diaz out for 55 days

Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Iquique will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.

Match

No end in sight to Iquique's wait for a win

4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Iquique has to find a result from somewhere.

Match

Iquique cannot find the net

4 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.

Squad

Tempers go at Iquique

Álvaro Ramos 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.

Boardroom

5 academy players handed senior numbers at Iquique

The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.

Squad

Facundo Pons 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.

Match

Union Espanola take the points off Iquique

Beaten 0‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.

The dugout

The manager makes an example of Zacarías López

“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.

Market

One of our own: Ivan Sierralta joins the Iquique first team

Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ivan Sierralta is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.

In brief