Thiago Daro: Boots of a Nomad

[ThiagoDaro]

Hey everyone!


I’m Thiago Daro — well, not really.
But that's the name of the fictional manager I’m using in my long-term Football Manager journey: “Boots of a Nomad.”


The idea?
I spin a wheel and let fate drop me into a new country — always starting from the bottom, building from scratch, and aiming to win the league before moving on to the next place.

I’d love to have your feedback, thoughts, and suggestions as the journey continues. Next stop? I won’t say it just yet… but it starts with mountains too


Cheers,
Thiago Daro
#BootsOfNomad

 

[ThiagoDaro]

Let me tell you some things about me first:

I was born on a Tuesday morning in Paysandú, a sleepy Uruguayan city that clings to the Río Uruguay like it’s afraid to let go. The locals say it was raining that day, though I’ve never confirmed it. My father worked the docks — not as a sailor, but the kind of man who hauled crates, lifted what others couldn’t, and knew the name of every ship captain who passed through.


My mother spoke five languages by the time she was thirty. She worked for embassies, schools, refugee programs — anyone who needed words turned into bridges. It’s said she could switch from Spanish to French to Arabic mid-sentence and not miss a beat. The two of them met in Porto Alegre, lived for a time in Asunción, and by the time I was four, we were in Tangier — chasing paperwork, paychecks, and peace.



By 1999, we were in Marseille, living in a two-room apartment above a butcher on Rue de la Joliette. The city was loud, proud, tense. I loved it. I learned the rhythm of the port. The rise and fall of the Vieux-Port chants. The OM jerseys strung across windows like laundry. But we couldn’t afford tickets. My stadium was the dirt field beside the tram tracks.

---

The Coach No One Called For​

I never got trials.


Never played for a real academy.


But I showed up — to every pickup game, every street corner. I wasn’t the best, but I watched. I learned how Nigerians played quicker, Balkans played sharper, North Africans played looser.


And I started writing things down.


By 18, I was back in South America — a failed attempt to “settle” in Montevideo. It didn’t stick. I wandered. Quito. Sucre. Belém. Paramaribo. Always alone, always watching. The moment that changed everything came in 2016 in a village outside Kandy, Sri Lanka. I’d been volunteering at a youth center, mostly cleaning and translating. Their football coach disappeared midway through the season — some dispute over funding. And someone pointed at me. “You… you know football, yes?” I blinked. Then nodded.

---

The Ritual Begins​

We lost our first two games. The players didn’t trust me. I didn’t even speak Sinhala. So I started learning — not just words, but their tempo. I walked through the markets. Ate with their families. Trained barefoot with them in the rain. We finished the season second. The parents pooled money to buy me a local scarf, stitched by hand.


That scarf never left my backpack.

---

Boots of Nomad​

In 2023, I decided I would stop drifting.
I’d take everything I’d learned — every scarf, every scribbled formation, every unsent postcard — and turn it into a project. A challenge. A commitment. One country at a time. One story per club. One truth about the world — seen through football. No transfers. No club twice. No shortcuts. I begin every save from the bottom, in 2023. I let fate choose the nation. I learn its names, its rhythms, its pain. Most games, I don’t even coach — my assistant takes charge.


I walk the sidelines, take notes, talk to the kit man, write poetry in the margins.


I don’t chase trophies.


I chase stories.

 

[ThiagoDaro]

The Ball Rolls Differently Here

I’d barely dropped my bags when I heard it again: the echo of a ball striking concrete. Not leather on grass—concrete. The sound bounced between buildings in Quito’s south end, somewhere near La Magdalena, where kids set up two rocks as goalposts and time doesn’t matter until the sun dips behind the mountains.


Football here isn’t a product. It’s not content. It’s not a brand.


It’s a need.


Ecuador’s game has that rough edge I’ve always respected. It reminds me of Montevideo, of cracked sidewalks and barefoot goals, but here it’s hungrier, more improvised. There’s a beautiful imbalance to it. One minute you see something divine—a feint, a pass, a run—and the next, a two-footed challenge that rattles your bones. This isn’t Spain. It’s not Brazil either. Ecuador plays its own game.


Football came here early, brought by English sailors and railway workers in the early 1900s. But it didn’t really explode until the mid-century, when teams like Barcelona SC and Emelec turned Guayaquil into South America’s lesser-known furnace of passion.


Today, football is everywhere. From the misty heights of Cuenca to the jungles near Macas, from the surf towns to the oil camps, there's always a pitch—dirt, grass, plastic, or concrete—and someone shouting “¡dale!”

​

• Serie A: Top flight. 16 clubs. Two-stage format. Fast, physical, unforgiving.
• Serie B: A league of scrappers, dreamers, and those who fell down but haven’t stopped swinging.
• Segunda Categoría: The grassroots. Provincial qualifiers, muddy fields, tiny towns. Real football.

Clubs go up. Clubs fall hard. And yet, every season, there’s a new breath.


Ecuadorians love football deeply, but without pretense. They don't worship it—they live it. In barrio pitches, university campuses, tiny Amazon towns with rusted goals. You don’t see flash here for its own sake. You see effort. You see ambition stitched into each jersey.


What’s more? They believe. They believe their time has come. And looking at the youth talent emerging from places like Sangolquí and Machala, they might be right.


La Tricolor – The Nation’s Breath

You can tell a lot about a country by how it wears its national shirt. In some places, it’s fashion. In others, marketing. But in Ecuador? It’s armor. It’s memory. It’s a flag worn over the soul.


They call it La Tri—short for La Tricolor. Yellow, blue, red. The colors of the flag. The colors of the team. And though the world only started paying attention to Ecuador recently, they’ve been climbing this mountain for decades.

​

For most of the 20th century, Ecuador was the overlooked cousin in South American football. No Copa América titles. No World Cup appearances. Just stories. Just hope.


That changed in 2002. For the first time, Ecuador qualified for the FIFA World Cup. I was a teenager then, back in Uruguay, and I remember watching them on an old TV at a friend’s place in Montevideo. I wasn’t cheering against them. I was fascinated. A team from the Andes, from the Amazon, from the equator—standing toe-to-toe with Europe’s giants.


They came back in 2006, and again in 2014. But it’s what’s happening now that feels different.


This generation is not just qualifying. It’s competing. It's believing.

---

​

When you mention Ecuadorian football abroad, a few names always come up first:

• Édison Méndez: The heartbeat of the early 2000s Tri. Class, vision, loyalty.
• Iván Hurtado: El Capitán eterno. One of the most capped South American players of all time. Anchored the back line like a monument.
• Antonio Valencia: The warrior. Former Manchester United captain. Fast, fierce, disciplined. He made it from the streets of Lago Agrio to the Theatre of Dreams and never forgot where he came from.

But the new blood? They’re something else.

• Moisés Caicedo – Midfield engine. Smart, relentless. Brighton saw it first, Chelsea paid the price. But before England, he was just a boy from Santo Domingo who learned to run on dirt fields and think two moves ahead.
• Piero Hincapié – Left-footed, elegant, fearless. Bayer Leverkusen turned him into a European champion. But his fire was lit in the youth systems of Independiente del Valle.
• Gonzalo Plata – The artist. A left boot made of silk and instinct.
• Kendry Páez – Still a teenager, but already carrying the expectations of a nation. Technically sublime, emotionally composed, he’ll wear the Chelsea blue soon—but here, he wears yellow with pride.

What unites them all? Roots. Hunger. Loyalty.


They don't just play for themselves—they play for villages that celebrated their goals with bonfires, for mothers who sold empanadas to buy their boots, for coaches who used milk crates as benches.

---

​

Whether in Quito’s Estadio Rodrigo Paz Delgado at 2,800 meters—where visiting teams gasp for breath—or in Guayaquil’s Monumental, when La Tri steps on the pitch, the streets go still.


Even in remote Amazon towns or up in mountain villages, someone always finds a way to stream the match. Radios crackle. Old TVs glow. Whole families gather. Not because they expect a miracle—but because they’ve seen one before.


Ecuador doesn't just support its national team. It lives through it.

 

[ThiagoDaro]

From Quito to Saquisilí – A Detour That Wasn’t​

I hadn’t planned on coming south.


After settling into Quito, I spent the first few days just walking—trying to reacquaint myself with the city’s impossible altitudes and my own thoughts. I wandered from the Centro Histórico, with its gold-laced churches and echoing stones, up toward El Panecillo, where the Virgin statue looks down over a city that never really sits still.


My phone buzzed with proposals—offers from mid-table clubs, whispers from Serie B. Good teams, even tempting ones. But nothing felt right. Nothing spoke.


Then came the bus ride.


I boarded a southbound coach at Terminal Quitumbe, not for any real reason. I just wanted out of the city for a day—some air, some silence, maybe to see Cotopaxi again from closer up. I took a seat by the window. No headphones. Just the road and the clouds.


An older man sat next to me. Poncho, felt hat, warm smile. He looked like someone who had worked with animals his whole life.

We didn’t speak at first. But somewhere past Latacunga, as Cotopaxi’s snowcapped peak began to appear between the shifting fog, he turned and said:

“¿Usted es el entrenador uruguayo? El que vino de Kosovo?”

I blinked. I nodded slowly.

“En Saquisilí hay un equipo. Humilde. Pero con hambre.”

There it was.


We talked the rest of the ride. He told me about a local team, about their patchy pitch and their coach who’d just quit after a bad run of form. He said the club didn’t have much—“pero tiene gente que cree.” People who believe.


He got off before me, at a market town I’ve already forgotten. But his words stayed with me.


When I stepped off the bus in Lacatunga, the altitude hit me first. Then the smell of eucalyptus, grilled corn, and faint wood smoke. The streets were mostly empty. It wasn’t market day yet. But the silence had a kind of shape to it. A waiting.


Not the absence of sound, but the presence of stillness. A stillness shaped by altitude, by earth, by time. Here, in the highlands of Cotopaxi Province, even the wind seems to know it’s passing through something sacred.


This isn’t Quito. There are no horns or sirens here. Just mountains—huge, brooding, indifferent. The sky shifts quickly over Saquisilí, sometimes bright blue, sometimes thick with cloud, sometimes pierced by the distant silhouette of Cotopaxi, the volcano that sleeps with smoke rising from its mouth like a warning or a promise.

This region is páramo country. Rugged, cold in the shade, dazzling in the sun. You see men in ponchos leading sheep across stone paths. You smell wood smoke at night and roast corn in the morning. You hear Kichwa words in the markets, spoken softly between generations.


Cotopaxi is not a postcard. It’s a presence. Its snowcapped summit looms behind every match, every training session, every conversation. You don’t ignore it—you play under it. You learn to carry yourself like the people here do: quietly, proudly, and with the kind of strength that doesn’t ask to be seen.

---

​

The town of Saquisilí isn’t large. You could walk from one end to the other in fifteen minutes. But every Thursday, it becomes the center of the world—or at least of Cotopaxi. That’s market day, when farmers, weavers, cheesemakers, and animal herders from all over the province fill the streets. Llamas, pigs, guinea pigs. Potatoes in burlap sacks. Handmade boots. Spices. Stories.


And in the middle of it all, tucked beside a row of eucalyptus trees and a hill that smells of earth and smoke, is the football club.

Deportivo Saquisilí.

No fancy complex. No glass offices. Just a pitch that fights against the highland cold, a rusty locker room that echoes too much, and a set of plastic chairs arranged like someone once cared about symmetry.


But there’s something about it—something honest.


I asked the club president what the long-term goal was. He shrugged and said:

“No bajar. Soñar. Darle algo al pueblo.”

Don’t get relegated. Dream. Give the town something.

That’s enough for me.


Or at least, it sounded like enough—until I stepped onto the training pitch for the first time.


I would not have understood why the president spoke like that—“no bajar, soñar, darle algo al pueblo”—until I saw who was waiting for me at the training ground:


No one.


No assistant coach. No physio. No analyst. Not even a groundskeeper. The field gate creaked open on its own, and silence stretched from one corner flag to the other.


No players.


I stood there, hands in my coat pockets, scarf twisting in the wind, staring at an empty pitch under the Cotopaxi sky. No drills set up. No cones. Just grass, uneven and overgrown, and a rusted goalpost leaning like it had given up halfway through last season.


But I didn’t panic. Not this time.


Because I’ve seen this before. I’ve seen nothing before. And I’ve turned it into something.


That’s what I do.


Now, I have the confidence sky-high—not arrogance, not illusion. Just that quiet, stubborn belief that I can build a team out of dirt, wind, and a few names scratched onto a notebook page.


And in Saquisilí, that’s exactly what I’ll have to do.


So I did what any modern manager might secretly admit to doing when desperation knocks: I opened Facebook.


Late at night, with a half-eaten plate of mote by my side and no staff in sight, I started scrolling through profiles, groups, old messages. One name kept appearing under shared contacts: Ariel Vélez. Young. Unproven. But I noticed something — he’d just finished a coaching course in Spain. No club history. No locker rooms. Just a certificate and a few posts about tactical models and training microcycles.


I messaged him.

“Estoy en Saquisilí. Proyecto nuevo. Desde cero. ¿Te animás?”

He replied a few hours later. Said he’d just returned home, hadn’t found anything yet, but he was hungry to start. Even if it meant starting in the cold shadow of Cotopaxi, with no salary guarantees, no facilities, no plan beyond belief.

“No tengo experiencia, pero tengo todo para dar.”

That was enough.


He got on a bus the next day.


Now he’s here. Ariel Vélez. No reputation. No pressure. Just a clean slate and a notebook full of dreams. He walks the pitch like he’s been here forever. He sets up cones like they’re trophies. And when we talk football, I see it in his eyes—the same spark I had when someone first pointed at me and said: “You… you know football, yes?”


Together, we’re building this thing from dirt.


Together, we’ll try to make history.


Together, we’ve made our first moves.

We’re not a team yet. Not really. But there are names now—not just positions. Faces. Stories. A training plan scribbled onto the whiteboard in Ariel’s chicken-scratch handwriting. A WhatsApp group with a Saquisilí club logo as the profile picture.


And that’s already more than most have.


Because in this division—the Segunda Categoría de Cotopaxi—many clubs start with nothing. We’re not alone in the scramble. Teams all over the province are still calling friends, cousins, ex-academy kids, anyone who can still run ten kilometers and keep a ball under control. But five of them—including La Unión de Pujilí, the big favorite—are already ahead. They’re organized. They’ve trained. They’ve scouted.


We’re not scared of them. But we see them.


This league is cruel in its simplicity. Only the first place goes to the playoffs—one game that decides whether you climb to the national stage of the Segunda Categoría or vanish into provincial memory. One game. No margin for error. No excuses.


So we build.

---

​

We’ve got one foreigner: Caio Mota. Brazilian. 21. Strong frame, clinical instinct. The kind of striker who doesn’t need ten chances. He’s not flashy—but he’s decisive. And in a league this raw, that matters.

Then there’s Jordan Ponguillo. Right back. Product of the Aucas academy. Fast, aggressive, no nonsense. His decisions are sharper than his first touch, but that’s fine. He can read danger before it becomes real. A quiet leader, even at 20. He’ll anchor the defense.

And finally, Silvano Estacio. Left-winger. Unpredictable. Came from Daquilema F.C., but he plays like someone who grew up improvising. Sharp acceleration, great flair, and enough off-the-ball movement to create chaos. I see potential in him—not just as a winger, but maybe as a kind of wild card behind the striker.

The rest of the squad? Young, local, hungry. Some names I can’t pronounce yet. Some still train in borrowed shoes. But they come. They run. They try.

 

[The chosen wrong]

The Ball Rolls Differently Here

View attachment 694712
I’d barely dropped my bags when I heard it again: the echo of a ball striking concrete. Not leather on grass—concrete. The sound bounced between buildings in Quito’s south end, somewhere near La Magdalena, where kids set up two rocks as goalposts and time doesn’t matter until the sun dips behind the mountains.


Football here isn’t a product. It’s not content. It’s not a brand.


It’s a need.


Ecuador’s game has that rough edge I’ve always respected. It reminds me of Montevideo, of cracked sidewalks and barefoot goals, but here it’s hungrier, more improvised. There’s a beautiful imbalance to it. One minute you see something divine—a feint, a pass, a run—and the next, a two-footed challenge that rattles your bones. This isn’t Spain. It’s not Brazil either. Ecuador plays its own game.


Football came here early, brought by English sailors and railway workers in the early 1900s. But it didn’t really explode until the mid-century, when teams like Barcelona SC and Emelec turned Guayaquil into South America’s lesser-known furnace of passion.


Today, football is everywhere. From the misty heights of Cuenca to the jungles near Macas, from the surf towns to the oil camps, there's always a pitch—dirt, grass, plastic, or concrete—and someone shouting “¡dale!”

​

• Serie A: Top flight. 16 clubs. Two-stage format. Fast, physical, unforgiving.
• Serie B: A league of scrappers, dreamers, and those who fell down but haven’t stopped swinging.
• Segunda Categoría: The grassroots. Provincial qualifiers, muddy fields, tiny towns. Real football.

Clubs go up. Clubs fall hard. And yet, every season, there’s a new breath.


Ecuadorians love football deeply, but without pretense. They don't worship it—they live it. In barrio pitches, university campuses, tiny Amazon towns with rusted goals. You don’t see flash here for its own sake. You see effort. You see ambition stitched into each jersey.


What’s more? They believe. They believe their time has come. And looking at the youth talent emerging from places like Sangolquí and Machala, they might be right.


La Tricolor – The Nation’s Breath

View attachment 694713
You can tell a lot about a country by how it wears its national shirt. In some places, it’s fashion. In others, marketing. But in Ecuador? It’s armor. It’s memory. It’s a flag worn over the soul.


They call it La Tri—short for La Tricolor. Yellow, blue, red. The colors of the flag. The colors of the team. And though the world only started paying attention to Ecuador recently, they’ve been climbing this mountain for decades.

​

For most of the 20th century, Ecuador was the overlooked cousin in South American football. No Copa América titles. No World Cup appearances. Just stories. Just hope.


That changed in 2002. For the first time, Ecuador qualified for the FIFA World Cup. I was a teenager then, back in Uruguay, and I remember watching them on an old TV at a friend’s place in Montevideo. I wasn’t cheering against them. I was fascinated. A team from the Andes, from the Amazon, from the equator—standing toe-to-toe with Europe’s giants.


They came back in 2006, and again in 2014. But it’s what’s happening now that feels different.


This generation is not just qualifying. It’s competing. It's believing.

---

​

When you mention Ecuadorian football abroad, a few names always come up first:

• Édison Méndez: The heartbeat of the early 2000s Tri. Class, vision, loyalty.
• Iván Hurtado: El Capitán eterno. One of the most capped South American players of all time. Anchored the back line like a monument.
• Antonio Valencia: The warrior. Former Manchester United captain. Fast, fierce, disciplined. He made it from the streets of Lago Agrio to the Theatre of Dreams and never forgot where he came from.

View attachment 694714


But the new blood? They’re something else.

• Moisés Caicedo – Midfield engine. Smart, relentless. Brighton saw it first, Chelsea paid the price. But before England, he was just a boy from Santo Domingo who learned to run on dirt fields and think two moves ahead.
• Piero Hincapié – Left-footed, elegant, fearless. Bayer Leverkusen turned him into a European champion. But his fire was lit in the youth systems of Independiente del Valle.
• Gonzalo Plata – The artist. A left boot made of silk and instinct.
• Kendry Páez – Still a teenager, but already carrying the expectations of a nation. Technically sublime, emotionally composed, he’ll wear the Chelsea blue soon—but here, he wears yellow with pride.

What unites them all? Roots. Hunger. Loyalty.


They don't just play for themselves—they play for villages that celebrated their goals with bonfires, for mothers who sold empanadas to buy their boots, for coaches who used milk crates as benches.

---

​

View attachment 694715
Whether in Quito’s Estadio Rodrigo Paz Delgado at 2,800 meters—where visiting teams gasp for breath—or in Guayaquil’s Monumental, when La Tri steps on the pitch, the streets go still.


Even in remote Amazon towns or up in mountain villages, someone always finds a way to stream the match. Radios crackle. Old TVs glow. Whole families gather. Not because they expect a miracle—but because they’ve seen one before.


Ecuador doesn't just support its national team. It lives through it.

Really enjoying this story so far! fantastic!

 

[ThiagoDaro]

It turns out, having a normal squad really counts in this division.

Nine games. Nine wins. Forty-four goals scored. None conceded. It looks easy on the table, but it’s been anything but. Every match is a negotiation—against altitude, uneven fields, players whose jobs start after the final whistle, referees who shrug at elbows and studs.


But what we have here at Deportivo Saquisilí—however raw, however fragile—is structure. And in a league like this, that alone is enough to change everything.


While other clubs were still assembling rosters, we were training. While others debated lineups, we were bonding. Ariel Vélez and I might have started from zero, but we started together.


And now? Now we sit top of the table. Perfect record. Atlético Saquisilí chasing close behind. La Unión de Pujilí, the reigning champions, behind them—but not gone. Not by a long shot. They have perfect record too

---

This week, we go to Pujilí.


Away.


The club that dominated this league last year. The one that everyone thought would ascend. They were there, fingertips on the ledge, and then the playoffs pulled them back into the dust like a cruel joke.


That kind of failure? It changes a club. Some collapse. But not La Unión.


They’re angry. Focused. Experienced. And they’ve been watching us. They know we’re the new threat, and they’ll want to remind us who they are.


It rained in Pujilí.


The kind of rain that settles into the ground and refuses to leave. Thin mist at kickoff, thicker by the second half. It soaked through jackets, clung to the stands, turned the pitch into something between mud and memory.

And we didn’t just win.


We dominated.


Jhon Loor—quiet, thin-framed, thoughtful—scored a hat-trick like it was his birthright. The first goal came just before the break, off the post and over the line, like the ball itself wanted to send a message. The second was instinct—a poacher’s finish. And the third? A strange, curling strike that kissed the post on the way in. A goal that wasn’t supposed to go in… but did.


And maybe that’s this team in a sentence.


We aren’t supposed to be here. But we are.


Champions of Cotopaxi. First place. But not promoted.


That’s the strange truth of this league. You fight for months—across altitude, rain, and cracked pitches—only to reach the end and realize:


The real season starts now.


We finished top. 21 wins. 1 defeat.

That single loss came on the last day, against Atlético Saquisilí, our neighbors. The town derby. A hard-fought match. But no bitterness. No drama. Just one of those games where the other side wanted to remind us they exist.


And you know what?


Let them have it.


We’re still top. And that’s what matters.

---

But there’s no time to frame this campaign. No time to savor the table. Because this league doesn’t promote its champions directly.


Now come the playoffs.


A single bracket. Win or go home. One bad day, one bad call, and everything we’ve done becomes background noise. Our reward for finishing first? The privilege of walking the tightrope under pressure.


It’s brutal. But it’s fair.


We’ve earned our place in the fight. Now we need to finish it.

---

The players know. No one sulked after the final whistle. No one pointed fingers. We shook hands with Atlético, loaded the gear, and got back to work. Because we aren’t mourning a loss.


We’re preparing for war.


The provincial chapter is over. We finished top. We did our job.


But the real journey begins now. The national playoff—the narrowest road in Ecuadorian football. Three tickets to Serie B. Three. Dozens will try. Most will fall.


We don’t plan to be one of them.

---

To face what’s ahead, we’ve added just one name.


Just one player. But the right one.

Franco Paredes. 20 years old. Argentine. Quick feet, sharper mind.. He’s not coming here for comfort—he’s coming to make a mark. To turn final thirds into playgrounds. To turn pressure into passes.


We needed someone who could break a line when the legs grow tired and the air grows thin.


Now we have him.

Four games to go.


We sit third—just enough.


Enough to get promoted. Enough to keep dreaming.


But it’s a dangerous place to be.


Because behind us? A dozen teams hungry to take our place. Ahead of us? Cuenca and Naranja Mekánica, both running with purpose. And just as fate would have it, our final game?


Away to Naranja.


Of course.

---

This league doesn’t allow comfort. One bad touch, one cold night, one bad bounce—and everything shifts. The gap between glory and heartbreak is about three points wide.


We’ve done well to recover.


The team feels connected again.


Franco Paredes is fitting in like he was born here.


Ariel’s sessions get sharper with every drill.


And still, the table haunts us.


We went into the final game of the season three points behind Naranja Mekánica.


The math was simple.


Only a win would do.


Anything else, and our hopes of direct promotion would vanish under someone else’s flag.

We didn’t just win.


We roared.


Four goals, each one louder than the last.


Góngora broke the ice.


Paredes danced through the midfield to slot the second.


Ponguillo buried a penalty with no hesitation.


And then, in the 96th minute, Caio Mota—our quiet Brazilian—fired in the fourth like a signature on the season.


Naranja 0 - Deportivo Saquisilí 4.


Their crowd silent. Ours in disbelief.


We had done it.

---

But football isn’t a straight line. It loops. It echoes.


Because now? In the playoff, the game that will decide our place in Serie B, guess who we face again?

 

[ThiagoDaro]

Naranja Mekánica.


Same team.


Different setting.


Different weight.


This isn’t about points anymore.


This is about access. Memory. Redemption. History.

​

A stadium that holds over 40,000 souls will host two provincial sides who’ve both clawed their way up through mud, missed buses, borrowed cones, and uneven pitches.


There, on that wide, perfect field, someone’s dream will end.


And someone else’s will finally begin.





This is the eleven I trust:

• Lukas Mero, 18 years old, in goal. Young, fearless, already hardened by altitude and expectations.
• A back line of Ponguillo, Allauca, W. Paredes, and J. Contreras—all locals. All fighters. All sharp enough to turn defense into breath.
• Cabezas and Góngora in midfield.
• John Auria wide right, pure chaos in motion.
• Estacio on the left, the heartbeat of the town.
• Franco Paredes, our Argentinian mind, behind the striker—seeing spaces before they exist.
• And up top, of course, Caio Mota. Quiet. Cold. Clinical.

We knew we needed to start fast.


Caio Mota, ever the ghost at the back post, scored in the 8th minute. Calm, sharp, deadly. The kind of goal you don’t celebrate too hard—because it’s only the beginning.


But then… heartbreak.


Franco Paredes, the kid who connected us, limped off in the 40th. Tight thigh. I didn’t speak. Ariel just nodded. We moved.


Then came the captain’s moment.


Jordan Ponguillo, from Cotopaxi itself, curled one into the corner in the 49th. No scream. No slide. Just a hand over the badge.


Naranja pulled one back. For a second, silence.


But then came the thunder.


Steven Góngora, from 21 meters, hit the top corner like it owed him money.


And in the final minute, John Auria—our wildcard, our runner, our spark—sealed it. 4-1.

We didn’t just win.


We earned promotion.


From Cotopaxi to Serie B.


From dirt to dream.


Ariel was in tears.


The players didn’t celebrate wildly. They stood. They looked at each other.


They understood.


We’re not done.


But this part? It’s ours forever.

Serie B.


It sounds bigger than it is, but it feels exactly as it should: tighter pitches, longer bus rides, heavier legs. Fewer smiles, more spreadsheets. This isn’t a dream anymore. It’s a job.


But it’s one I chose.


And we earned it.

---

After the chaos of promotion, after the fog and celebration and awkward interviews in borrowed jackets, we finally got the email that mattered: the rules.

​

• 12 teams
• 33 matches total (everyone plays each other three times)
• Top 2 teams go directly to Serie A
• 3rd place enters a promotion playoff
• 12th place is relegated to the Ascenso Nacional
• Tie-breakers? First head-to-head, then goal difference
• 5 substitutions, over 3 stoppages, from a bench of 10

We start February 18th. We finish October 27th.


That’s a long way to live on edge.


We’re projected 5th out of 12 by the media.


Smack in the middle. A team that should "compete" but not "challenge." That’s fine. We’ve always been louder on the pitch than on paper.


Still, this season looks different.


Because this season… we had to let go.

---

The Ones Who Stayed and the Ones Who Didn’t​

We didn’t keep Lukas Mero.


He left like young stars do—fast, full of promise, and already out of reach. Good for him.


We kept Ponguillo, Góngora, Estacio, Paredes, Auria.


The soul of the team still beats loud.


But we had to build again. So we did.

---

The New Foundation​

Andy Velasco, 27

The quiet giant. Came from Independiente del Valle B with boots that have seen more mud than medals. 1.88 meters, calm head, clean tackles. Doesn’t talk much—just defends. You need that. Especially now.


Luiz Guilherme, 20

The storm. A striker from Villa Nova, Brazil. Fast, strong, unpredictable. Walks like a boxer, finishes like a kid trying to be noticed. We don’t know how long we’ll have him. But while he’s here? We feed him the ball and get out of the way.


Héctor Chávez, 26

I’ve said this before, but it deserves repeating: some players arrive by tunnel.


Chávez played in so many small towns he probably knows every region of Ecuador by smell alone. Always the “almost” guy. Until now.


Now he’s ours.


He runs like he’s trying to forget how long it took. He’s not here to prove anything. He’s here to collect.

“He trains like he’s apologizing to his younger self.”

---

The locker room feels different this year.


No more “we’re lucky to be here.”


It’s more like: “Now that we’re here, what are we going to do about it?”


Serie B isn’t a miracle.


It’s an invitation.


It’s what comes after the fairy tale.


And that’s where I feel most at home.


There’s no winter here.

No frost on the windows. No breath in the air. Just the same sky, the same golden sun sneaking through the Andes, and that feeling in the pit of your stomach when things are going too well.


Fifteen games played.


Top of the league.


33 points.


We didn’t plan this. We prepared, we worked, we hoped. But this? This is something else.

 

[ThiagoDaro]

Luiz Guilherme is on fire.


Seventeen goals in fifteen matches.


And it’s not just the numbers—it’s the way he moves. He plays like he doesn’t quite believe in limits. If the angle’s wrong, he shoots anyway. If the ball’s too far, he sprints harder. He’s chaos wrapped in technique, and every defender in Serie B is learning his name the hard way.


I’ve seen strikers catch fire.


But this… this is sustained combustion.


And you know what’s scary?


He hasn’t even peaked yet.

---

It’s not just him.

• Jordan Mohor has become the quiet king of assists.
• Héctor Chávez, the man who waited, now has seven assists too. He looks like a man finally getting to live inside his own body.
• Velasco, Paredes, Ponguillo—the whole spine is solid. They carry the altitude like they were born in it.

This isn’t momentum anymore.


This is identity.

---

And in Saquisilí?


The streets hum with something warm.


Not hysteria. Not pressure.


Just pride.


Kids wear our badge on their hoodies. Market stalls shout out matchdays. Even the older folks—the ones who never liked football—ask me how “the number 9” is doing.


No one says promotion out loud.


But they’re thinking it.


****, I’m thinking it.

The noise was unreal. Not the kind that comes from drums or chants—but that internal static, the hum of nerves stretching skin, of lungs searching for calm between seconds. Against Imbabura, we were two goals down before we could breathe. And yet, there was no panic. We didn’t even speak on the bench. Chávez just picked up the ball and went. One goal, then an assist, then another goal—his boots rewriting our season, his heart louder than the crowd. Franco Paredes equalized like he’d done it a hundred times. Dario opened up play like pages in a book. Luiz Guilherme scored in the 94th minute, and I didn’t celebrate. I just stood there and watched. We had done the impossible. Again. Four wins in a row, and now first in the table. But we still needed one more.





And so we went to the Olímpico Atahualpa to face Cuniburo. The crowd? 85 people. Eighty-five. But to us, it could’ve been eighty thousand. There’s a strange beauty in that—fighting for promotion in front of barely a busload of fans, and still giving everything. Darío Pazmiño got us going early, and Edson—our quiet, no-nonsense defender—rose and smashed home a header like a striker. Jordan Mohor, who’s been patient all year, took his chance and buried it. And Luiz? He always scores, doesn’t he? 4–1. Full time. No pitch invasion. No music. Just hugs. Some tears. Ariel Vélez called his mother. I just sat on the bench and looked around, trying to understand how a town that once didn’t even show up to training had now written its name into the story of Ecuadorian football.

We’re up. Saquisilí is going to Serie A.




And I don’t know how to explain it. We didn’t buy stars. We built them. Or maybe we just gave them space to shine. Luiz Guilherme—the storm from Brazil—wasn't just the league’s top scorer. He was the soul of our attack, relentless, fearless, smiling even after missed chances, hungry like a boy playing barefoot on a beach. Twenty-eight games. Twenty-four goals. It wasn’t just stats—it was presence. Every run he made told defenders: “I’m coming again.”


Héctor Chávez—he waited years for this. Called a lower-league star, brushed aside by clubs with shinier budgets. But when the moment came, he carried us. His goals turned defeats into belief. His assists opened locked games. There was blood in his boots and fire in his eyes. And Darío Pazmiño? The calm. The silence between storms. He’s not the one who shouts, but he sees things others don’t—passing lines, gaps, tempo. He orchestrated our climb with touches so light you’d think he wasn’t even there. But he was. Always. All of them were. Jordan Ponguillo, Edson, Mohor, Carrera, Velasco, Góngora, Guzmán, Rubén Lajones—every one of them wrote their line in this page.


We didn’t have a team. We had a story. And for now, it reads: Serie B champions. Serie A awaits.

 

[ThiagoDaro]

The mountains haven’t moved, but everything else has. Deportivo Saquisilí is in the first division. Serie A. I still remember the dust on the sidelines of our first training in Cotopaxi. I remember the borrowed cones, the players walking in from work, the silence in the changing room. Now? Now we’re preparing to face Emelec. Barcelona SC. Liga de Quito. Giants of Ecuador. Clubs with TV deals, press rooms, pressure. We’re still the same club, but the wind hits different at this altitude.


The rules are clear: five spots for the Libertadores, four for the Sudamericana. Only eight foreigners allowed, but we barely even reach half. That’s not an oversight. It’s who we are. There’s not a wave of international players knocking on the door of Latacunga, and even if there were, we’re not ready to give up what we’ve built. This team means something here. People know the names. People see their cousins, their classmates, their coworkers in our eleven.

That said, we did go shopping. You have to. This level is brutal. You get caught daydreaming for five minutes and someone like Miller Bolaños will hang three on you. Our biggest addition? Paulo Souto, a quiet, wiry 18-year-old from Brazil. Looks like he hasn’t filled out yet—but his brain is already playing at full speed. Reads space like it’s printed on paper. Every touch, every pause, every pivot feels like something he’s done a thousand times before. He’s not loud. But he’s here.

Alongside him, Jean Carlos Humanante. A name everyone in Ecuadorian football has heard. Relegated with Guayaquil City last year, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. This guy’s an engine. Tackles hard, passes clean, knows when to take a yellow for the team. He brings presence. You don’t tell stories about players like him—but you win matches because of them.

The rest of the squad? It’s a mix of loyalty and opportunity. Luiz Guilherme stayed. After all the goals, after all the headlines, he stayed. Héctor Chávez, still pushing himself after finally getting the stage he’s long deserved. Some new faces fighting for a chance, others hanging on because Cotopaxi is home.


We’re not here to fill space. This season isn’t a gift. We earned this. But it’s going to test us in every way. New stadiums. New opponents. Bigger expectations. For now, the town is buzzing. The storefronts have flags in the windows. The kids play in Saquisilí shirts. There’s this feeling, just under the surface, that something special might be happening again.


Serie A didn’t welcome us. It tested us. Our first day felt like a dream—5–0 at home against Libertad de Loja. Smooth, sharp football, the kind you bottle and show at coaching courses. But dreams don’t last long in the Andes. We went into a tailspin: five defeats in six games, each one a different kind of pain. Tight losses. Wild matches. One goal here, a red card there. I’ve had quieter months during storms.

The truth is we’re playing good football going forward. Sometimes exceptional. We scored 5 against Macará. We’ve scored in nearly every game. But defensively? It’s chaos. A soft underbelly, errors in timing, nerves under pressure. One week we look like contenders, the next like tourists.


Halfway through, we sit 10th. Out of the relegation zone, yes—but only just. The line between survival and disaster is so thin, it hums. But there’s fight in this team. No one's hiding. And we’re scoring enough to believe something solid is still possible. One run of form, one defensive fix, one bit of luck—and we could turn this into something greater.

The second half is ours to shape.

Two games. That’s all that’s left between us and the history books—or the shadowed silence of just-missed chances. We sit 10th. Aucas sit 9th. One point ahead, same number of games. The final Copa Sudamericana ticket is dangling between us, and the odds… they feel like a coin in the air.


Aucas isn’t just another team. This year, they played against Boca Juniors in the Copa. Knocked them out. Made headlines across the continent. They’ve got pedigree, fire, experience. But we have something else: hunger.


We’re up against Gualaceo and Orense. Both teams below us, both already staring at their own void. It sounds easier than it is—but at this stage, there are no easy games. Just desperate ones. Meanwhile, Aucas will have to face Independiente del Valle, who are chasing Liga de Quito for the title. That gives us hope.


I can feel it everywhere. In the streets of Saquisilí. In the early training sessions when the mist still clings to the mountain. In the way Luiz Guilherme stretches a second longer, the way Humanante speaks before we go out.


We’ve come from the dust. From the pitches with no stands, from 4–1 wins in front of 85 people. Now we’re here, brushing shoulders with the best in Ecuador.


I don’t know how this ends. But I know we’ll fight.

Two wins out of two. Mission accomplished—and then some. We didn’t just catch Aucas. We surpassed Macará too, finishing 8th in our very first Serie A campaign. The boys gave everything, and it showed.


Now, the dream lives on. We’ve earned a shot at the Copa Sudamericana through the playoff route. The town is buzzing. The team is fearless. And I—I’m just proud. Proud of every drop of sweat these players left on the pitch. Proud of how far we’ve come from those muddy afternoons in the Ascenso.


We’re not just here to participate. We’re here to compete. Let’s see how far this ride takes us.