12 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Dorados told Yael Padilla something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
In brief
Squad11 new faces, and Dorados are still learning each other
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Dorados have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Erik Pimentel 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.
In brief
Boardroom249% of the income goes out in wages at Dorados
SquadYael Padilla is the division's best young player this month
10 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Yael Padilla, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.88
A mark of 8.88 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Jonathan Vaal has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at Dorados 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.
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.
Shots: 9. 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.
0‑3 to Monterrey, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Yael Padilla 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 music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
Squad14 Sep 2026
11 new faces, and Dorados are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Jonathan Vaal knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Marked 5.45. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Erik Pimentel 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.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 5 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
0‑4 to Tigres, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
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.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
Morelia go through and Dorados go home, 2‑2 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Jonathan Vaal: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Dorados can pretend not to have heard.
Erik Pimentel 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.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Santos Laguna left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad17 Aug 2026
9 new faces, and Dorados are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Dorados training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. David Osuna is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Jorge Alberto Sánchez is 33 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Still no offer on the table, and Carlos Galicia’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
0‑4 to Queretaro, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dorados this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Still no offer on the table, and Leonardo Vargas’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.