Coco

Striker - Defensores Unidos
22 Sep 2038
Wednesday
Process

Marked for Coco

618 Edition

The Defensores Unidos Herald

31 May 2038
From our football correspondent Crisis

Match

The season ends here for Defensores Unidos

Boca Juniors go through. The table said this team was good enough for months and the format does not care what the table said, which is the argument every eliminated club has had with itself since playoffs were invented.

Squad

Matías Bianchi breaks a bone — 80 days out

Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 80 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.

Match

The wait goes on for Defensores Unidos

6 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.

Market

Freddy Hernandez is on his way

The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Defensores Unidos is pretending he will be back in the shirt.

Squad

Tempers go at Defensores Unidos

Lucas Pedraza 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.

Squad

Leonardo Ibáñez 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.

Squad

Coco signs on for more

“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Coco and Defensores Unidos agree another 3 years.

Player ratings

Mauro Skunca runs at them all day

Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.

Market

The Dylan Argüello story refuses to die

It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Dylan Argüello signs something — a contract at Defensores Unidos or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.

In brief

  • Player ratings A day to forget for Lucho
  • Player ratings Noah Blanco never got going