Marked for Guilherme Cunha
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces5 Mar 2029
Anger at Defensores spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Player ratings5 Mar 2029
Successful dribbles: 33. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market5 Mar 2029
“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.
Player ratings5 Mar 2029
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.98 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad5 Mar 2029
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Nicolás Benegas commits to Defensores for another 3 years.
The terraces5 Mar 2029
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Bruno Solotar has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match3 Mar 2029
A 2‑0 win over Talleres, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Match3 Mar 2029
It had gone 5 games. The players did not celebrate like men who had won a match; they celebrated like men who had been let out of something.
Player ratings5 Mar 2029
A performance of 8.39 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The dugout29 Jan 2029
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market29 Jan 2029
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Defensores, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad29 Jan 2029
Ian Pérez and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Boardroom29 Jan 2029
The accounts make uncomfortable reading. Wages first and ambition second is the order of business at Defensores now.
The dugout29 Jan 2029
This is not rotation. Ivan Borges has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Defensores is pretending otherwise.
Squad29 Jan 2029
Everybody at Defensores saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 36 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Boardroom29 Jan 2029
86% of the income goes out in wages at Defensores
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
The dugout29 Jan 2029
“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.
The dugout29 Jan 2029
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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad22 Jan 2029
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ezequiel Aguirre
20 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Defensores lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad22 Jan 2029
A row about effort at Defensores
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nicolás Morro was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout22 Jan 2029
The manager makes an example of Federico Viera
“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.
Market22 Jan 2029
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Leonardo Landriel signs something — a contract at Defensores or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The dugout22 Jan 2029
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Squad22 Jan 2029
“I did not sign to watch. Nobody does.” The oldest complaint in the game, and Defensores will have to answer it with minutes or with a move.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad15 Jan 2029
Ezequiel Aguirre damages knee ligaments — 27 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 27 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.
Squad15 Jan 2029
18 days out for Agustín Benítez after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Defensores will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market15 Jan 2029
Ivan Borges 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 Defensores can pretend not to have heard.
Squad15 Jan 2029
Vitor Bezerra 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.
The dugout15 Jan 2029
“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.
Squad15 Jan 2029
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Defensores will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Market15 Jan 2029
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Nicolás Benegas’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
The dugout15 Jan 2029
Franco Sassone knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Franco Sassone trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market15 Jan 2029
The market said no: Nicolás Morro stays put
Defensores opened the door and nobody walked through it. So Nicolás Morro stays — listed, trained, and available — while both sides mark the days to January on the same calendar.