Marked for Ivan Rodriguez
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match15 May 2027
10 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.
Squad17 May 2027
Ivan Rodriguez damages knee ligaments — 14 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 14 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.
Squad17 May 2027
Andrés Samurio 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 May 2027
Facundo Silvestre 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.
Match15 May 2027
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Uruguay Montevideo can tell you which week it ends in.
Squad17 May 2027
“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.
Match15 May 2027
Wanderers left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings17 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings17 May 2027
5.32. Every footballer has these and most of them happen away from a full ground; his did not, and he will be aware of that all week.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad10 May 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ivan Rodriguez
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Uruguay Montevideo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match8 May 2027
9 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Uruguay Montevideo has to find a result from somewhere.
Match10 May 2027
Position 15 and 7 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.
Squad10 May 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 Uruguay Montevideo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 May 2027
The manager makes an example of Cristian Lima
“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.
Match8 May 2027
0‑1 to Racing, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad10 May 2027
Words at Uruguay Montevideo training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Emiliano García 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.
Player ratings10 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings10 May 2027
A mark of 5.51 tells the story without any need for embellishment. He will want the tape of this one quietly lost.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad3 May 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ivan Rodriguez
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Uruguay Montevideo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match1 May 2027
The run now stands at 8, and the questions being asked around Uruguay Montevideo are no longer polite ones.
Market3 May 2027
“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 Uruguay Montevideo, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad3 May 2027
Andrés Samurio 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.
Squad3 May 2027
Facundo Silvestre 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.
Squad3 May 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Sebastián Camacho, and the manager let it.
Match1 May 2027
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Market3 May 2027
A conversation is coming this week. Uruguay Montevideo will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Player ratings3 May 2027
Successful dribbles: 13. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.