Deportivo Cali will begin its Copa BetPlay 2026 campaign on Monday, May 11, when it hosts Atlético Bucaramanga at the Estadio Palmaseca, and coach Rafael Dudamel plans to open with the lineup he trusts most.
That approach was reflected in the squad list, where Avilés Hurtado was left out while Juan José Gómez Miranda was called up from the Sub-19 team, Santiago Vallecilla was promoted after helping win the South American Sub-17 championship in Paraguay, and Kevin Suárez also earned Dudamel’s confidence for the match.
The planned structure is close to the one outlined by Quique Barón, who said the most likely starting team would feature Pedro Gallese in goal; Fabián Viáfara, Julián Quiñones, Felipe Aguilar and Keimer Sandoval across the back; Juan José Tello as the new face at left back; and, farther forward, Ronaldo Pájaro, Matías Orozco, Johan Martínez, Andrés ‘Titi’ Rodríguez and Juan Ignacio Dineno.
For Cali, the game is more than a season opener. It is the club’s first test in the competition after resting in the opening round, and it arrives in a tournament that changed its format in 2025 with a preliminary phase designed to bring in 12 clubs eliminated from the Liga and eight clubs eliminated from the Torneo before the winners move on to meet the 16 clubs that reached the final stages of the local competitions.
The new structure also raises the stakes. The Copa BetPlay champion will qualify for the Copa Sudamericana 2027, which gives every match a value that goes beyond a simple cup run and turns the visit of Bucaramanga into an early measure of where Deportivo Cali stands under Dudamel.
The tension in Cali is not about whether the club has enough name recognition to compete. It is about whether the coach’s familiar choices can carry the team through a format that now demands immediate results, and whether the young players added to the squad can do more than fill space if the match becomes difficult at Palmaseca.
What happens on Monday will say something important about the way Dudamel intends to manage the tournament: with continuity at the core, selective changes around the edges, and a clear willingness to trust the players already inside the circle.
