Marked for David Castillo
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
Successful dribbles: 42. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Salomon Arango 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.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
Ninety minutes of Darwin Casseres at his very best
Marked 8.14. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Estudiantes de Caracas.
Player ratings29 Mar 2027
Wilson Barrios ran the middle of the pitch — 7.16
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 7.16, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Squad29 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Estudiantes de Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Carlos Savarino
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Estudiantes de Caracas lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match24 Feb 2027
1‑2 against Deportivo Lara, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Squad1 Mar 2027
A fracture rules Jose Ferraresi out for 36 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Estudiantes de Caracas will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings1 Mar 2027
A first appearance David Castillo will want to forget — 4.85
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 4.85, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
Squad1 Mar 2027
José Cadenas in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Estudiantes de Caracas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Salomon Arango 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
Uneasy
Match6 Feb 2027
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 8‑2 against Llaneros, and it could have been more.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.75, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
A brace, and Diego Murillo takes the afternoon — 9.54
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Diego Murillo provided it, and the 9.54 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.49, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Two goals and a mark of 7.96 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Match6 Feb 2027
10 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Estudiantes de Caracas and Llaneros in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Squad8 Feb 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Salomon Arango 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match23 Jan 2027
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Match23 Jan 2027
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Squad25 Jan 2027
José Cadenas 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.
Boardroom25 Jan 2027
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Salomon Arango 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.
Match23 Jan 2027
0‑2 to Caracas, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Market25 Jan 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Andres Arango is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market25 Jan 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Alejandro Rosales has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Market25 Jan 2027
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Fernando Rondon has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.