Marked for Darwin Ramirez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad1 Jan 2035
Darwin Ramirez damages knee ligaments — 18 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 18 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.
Squad1 Jan 2035
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Deportivo La Guaira will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Squad1 Jan 2035
152 appearances across 11 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Market1 Jan 2035
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Deportivo La Guaira is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad1 Jan 2035
Martín Gianoli 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.
Market1 Jan 2035
Tigre are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Deportivo La Guaira will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad25 Dec 2034
A knee injury of the worst kind for Darwin Ramirez
26 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Deportivo La Guaira lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The terraces25 Dec 2034
Supporters turn on the $900.0K sale of Benjamín Sand
He is going to Carabobo, the club has $900.0K it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Market25 Dec 2034
Benjamín Sand has left for Carabobo in a $900.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad25 Dec 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo La Guaira this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad25 Dec 2034
A move Andrei Noyok would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Andrei Noyok is living that version at Deportivo La Guaira, and it tends to show in the first month.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad18 Dec 2034
A knee injury of the worst kind for Darwin Ramirez
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Deportivo La Guaira lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad18 Dec 2034
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Deportivo La Guaira will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Market18 Dec 2034
Caracas come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Deportivo La Guaira did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market18 Dec 2034
Add another name to the list: Tigre have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Martín Gianoli. The answer from Deportivo La Guaira has not changed — yet.
Boardroom18 Dec 2034
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Victor Ferraresi has agreed terms with Portuguesa for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad18 Dec 2034
Martín Gianoli 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.
Boardroom18 Dec 2034
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Thabiso Msele has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Deportivo La Guaira have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Squad18 Dec 2034
Words at Deportivo La Guaira training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Manuel Sulbarán 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.
Market18 Dec 2034
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Leonardo Marchi has his answer from Deportivo La Guaira; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad11 Dec 2034
A knee injury of the worst kind for Darwin Ramirez
40 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Deportivo La Guaira lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market11 Dec 2034
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market11 Dec 2034
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad11 Dec 2034
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Deportivo La Guaira this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.