Marked for Junior Paredes
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Jorge Sánchez
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.
Match2 Oct 2026
1‑2 away to the standard of Penarol. Nobody will pretend this was a scandal; the gap is real, it is measurable, and closing it is a project rather than a team talk.
Match2 Oct 2026
4 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Carlos Rivero 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 8.00 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Shots: 6, not one of them in. A centre forward is paid for one thing, and on this evidence he has forgotten which thing it is.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Blas Valenzuela dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 5.73, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad24 Aug 2026
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Cristopher Varela: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Match19 Aug 2026
Mineros de Guayana go through and Deportivo La Guaira go home, 1‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Squad24 Aug 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 Deportivo La Guaira this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Jesús Vargas gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
It was his to settle and he did not settle it. A long walk back to the halfway line, and a considerably longer week.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Blas Valenzuela dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match12 Aug 2026
A 3‑0 win over Metropolitanos, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 25 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad17 Aug 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 Deportivo La Guaira this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
At 22 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.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Marked 8.67 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Match12 Aug 2026
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Metropolitanos tried to reorganise, Deportivo La Guaira did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
19 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A performance of 8.13 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.