Marked for Daniel Ramirez
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad27 Aug 2035
Daniel Ramirez 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.
Squad27 Aug 2035
He is 21, he is averaging 7.61, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
Squad27 Aug 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atletico Venezuela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad20 Aug 2035
Daniel Ramirez damages knee ligaments — 21 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 21 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.
Market20 Aug 2035
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Atletico Venezuela they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad20 Aug 2035
Roberto Soteldo 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad13 Aug 2035
Daniel Ramirez damages knee ligaments — 28 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 28 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.
Player ratings13 Aug 2035
Successful dribbles: 25. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad13 Aug 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atletico Venezuela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad13 Aug 2035
Jesús Cortéz 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.
Match11 Aug 2035
0‑1 to Carabobo, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad13 Aug 2035
“The easiest signature of my career.” Kevin Carrión and Atletico Venezuela agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad6 Aug 2035
Daniel Ramirez damages knee ligaments — 35 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 35 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.
Boardroom6 Aug 2035
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Player ratings6 Aug 2035
Two goals and a mark of 9.38 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Boardroom6 Aug 2035
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Squad6 Aug 2035
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad6 Aug 2035
Roberto Soteldo 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 terraces6 Aug 2035
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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad30 Jul 2035
Daniel Ramirez damages knee ligaments — 42 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 42 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.
Squad30 Jul 2035
A season average of 7.59 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Atletico Venezuela know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Squad30 Jul 2035
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Atletico Venezuela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.