Marked for Nicolás Palacios
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad26 Oct 2026
Blas González and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Boardroom26 Oct 2026
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Jesús Alvarenga has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Sportivo Carapegua have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Samuel Giménez was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Market26 Oct 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sportivo Carapegua, another week without a signature from Gastón Muñoz.
Squad26 Oct 2026
23 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Market26 Oct 2026
Nobody sells a season ticket on a signing like this. Every manager who has been through a bad October wants one anyway, and Sportivo Carapegua have gone and got theirs early.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Oct 2026
19 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Sportivo Carapegua lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad19 Oct 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sportivo Carapegua this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Everybody at Sportivo Carapegua saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 35 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Boardroom19 Oct 2026
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Augusto Melgarejo has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Sportivo Carapegua have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Squad19 Oct 2026
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Oct 2026
27 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Sportivo Carapegua lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Iván Salcedo arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Iván Salcedo has, at Sportivo Carapegua, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Market12 Oct 2026
Milver Aquino has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sportivo Carapegua they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market12 Oct 2026
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Blas González 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 36, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Fernando Bracho
“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.
Market12 Oct 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sportivo Carapegua, another week without a signature from Iván Salcedo.
Market12 Oct 2026
Nicolás Palacios arrives at 34 with nothing left to prove and plenty left to pass on. Legs are a young man's currency; knowing where to stand never ages.