Marked for Derlis Martinez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market6 Sep 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 The request is on a desk at General Caballero JLM, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad6 Sep 2027
César Castro and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Maximiliano Gauto 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.
Squad6 Sep 2027
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 37 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
The dugout6 Sep 2027
“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.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Somebody has moved past him. It is not a dropping and it is worse than one, because a dropping is about a Saturday and this is about where he stands.
Market6 Sep 2027
At 36, he has seen every situation this season can produce, twice. The legs will be managed; the head is the purchase.
The dugout6 Sep 2027
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Thomas Barrios is on it.
Looking ahead6 Sep 2027
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Cristhofer Maqueda’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and General Caballero JLM needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match28 Aug 2027
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Deportivo Santani kept coming because nothing stopped them, and General Caballero JLM will be asked about the last half hour all week.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Two goals and a mark of 8.90 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Derlis Martinez could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.29
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.29, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
Squad30 Aug 2027
César Castro 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Alejandro Bogado 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.
The dugout30 Aug 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.
Match28 Aug 2027
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Bruno Duarte beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 15. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Cristhofer Maqueda, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.87
A mark of 7.87 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad23 Aug 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 General Caballero JLM this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Maximiliano Gauto was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The terraces23 Aug 2027
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The dugout23 Aug 2027
The manager makes an example of Víctor Argüello
“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.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The dugout23 Aug 2027
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 1‑0, Luis Peralta could afford to be generous.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market9 Aug 2027
“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.
The dugout9 Aug 2027
“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.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Bruno Duarte 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.
Match7 Aug 2027
6 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Encarnacion were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Transfer targets9 Aug 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Alejandro Bogado 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 ratings9 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 19. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Market9 Aug 2027
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Derlis Martinez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Match7 Aug 2027
A 1‑0 win over Encarnacion, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.