Marked for Déiber Caicedo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Sep 2026
A falling-out at Junior
Luis Muriel and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Match19 Sep 2026
0‑1 to Union Magdalena, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Boardroom21 Sep 2026
Nobody left the Junior dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Fabian Torres after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
“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 ratings21 Sep 2026
Shots: 4. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
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 Yohandry Orozco is on it.
Looking ahead21 Sep 2026
Atletico Nacional next, and one man in the Junior dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
Yenisey come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Junior did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A muscle injury and 16 days out for Pablo Ortiz
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Junior will quote 16 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and José Enamorado has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Junior will explain it as a decision about the team, and it may well be one. A dressing room has never once read it that way.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Junior, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
Déiber Caicedo has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Junior will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
Deportivo Pasto next, and one man in the Junior dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Market7 Sep 2026
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Mauro Silveira’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Jesús Rivas has moved up it.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad24 Aug 2026
The knee: Yimmi Chará out for 20 days
20 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Junior lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Match19 Aug 2026
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Miller Bacca obliged against Leones. 4‑3 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Junior.
Match22 Aug 2026
No mercy from Junior
Patriotas will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Junior were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Match19 Aug 2026
Miller Bacca wins it after the whistle should have gone
100 minutes played. Miller Bacca found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Leones went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.91, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Teo Gutiérrez, 41, rolls back the years — 8.18
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.18 at 41, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 24. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market24 Aug 2026
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.