Pumas loses Córdova for nine months to torn ACL, faces market with no easy fixes

The Leagues Cup left Mexico with more bruises than trophies, at least for Pumas. Between a match against Cincinnati and another against Columbus, the university club lost two important pieces of its roster, and now the front office is forced to hit the transfer market at the worst possible time, when almost no options remain available.

The toughest blow came with Sebastián Córdova. The midfielder suffered a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee last Friday, during the match against Cincinnati. The injury will keep him off the field for roughly nine months, a timeline that rules him out entirely for the Apertura 2026 and puts his availability for much, if not all, of the Clausura 2027 in doubt. Córdova will undergo surgery this very week, and in the meantime, the news landed like a gut punch in the locker room, the coaching staff and the club's front office, none of whom expected to lose one of their top midfielders.

The front office is already working to find a replacement with similar characteristics, though the outlook is far from simple. Pumas has all nine foreign player slots allowed under Liga MX rules filled, which narrows the range of possibilities. What's more, with the Apertura 2026 already underway, pulling a player away from another Mexican club mid-competition is next to impossible. The market, already limited to begin with, closes even further for coach Esteban Solari, who is waiting to hear whether reinforcements will arrive before his midfield rotation gets even more complicated.

Angulo also got hurt in the Leagues Cup

The bad news didn't stop there. In the match against Columbus, also part of the Leagues Cup, Colombian fullback Álvaro Angulo suffered a knee sprain. The scene was rough: Angulo left the field on a stretcher, in tears from the pain, which initially set off alarm bells inside the club.

Fortunately for Pumas, tests on the affected area ruled out a more serious injury and confirmed it was only a sprain. The Colombian defender, an undisputed starter in Solari's setup, will go through a rest period followed by recovery therapy, with an estimated time out of three weeks. That would put him back in action around September, avoiding a longer absence for a team that comes out of its run in the summer tournament bruised.

With Córdova out for the rest of the year and Angulo in recovery, Pumas' front office faces a double challenge: covering two significant losses in a market that, by regulation and calendar, offers very few open doors.