Born on a seemingly unimportant day, the 3rd of December 2003, in the depths of Colombia, a country more famed for its coffee and the cyclic motion of Shakira's hips than its football, Óscar Cortés appeared in our realm. This modest specimen, weighing in at 74kg (11st 9lb) and stretching the tape at all of 1.76m (5ft 9in), is presently a forward marauding on the left wing, not for the footballing maestros of Celtic, mind you, but for our cherubs from across the city, Rangers.
Donned in the revered yet weighty number 7 jersey, young Cortés has a market value of approximately £3m, give or take a bob or two. This, according to those at Transfermarkt, who presumably find some satisfaction in attaching arbitrary values to mere mortals clad in polyester shorts. His contract, as honoured an institution as that can be these days, with the Gers is set to laughably expire in the balmy days of June 2025.
Our Colombian hero's journey was naught but ordinary. His footballing story started back in his homeland with Millonarios in the Primera A. He then decided to swap the Juan Valdez cafés and arepas for croissants and coq-au-vin. Yes, in July 2023, Cortés upped sticks for a dizzyingly promising new chapter in France with Lens for a reported fee of around £3.9m. There, he remarkably managed to pull on a shirt for the first team four times, even scoring a single, lonely goal.
Then, in a move that shook the footballing world to its... well, not its core exactly, more like a mild stirring, he was offloaded to Rangers in chilly Scotland, on loan, in February 2024. The 2023 - 2024 season saw him squeeze into a blue jersey for six appearances, astonishingly repeating his earlier feat and netting a solitary goal. This season, that being the 2024 - 2025 campaign, he's donned the shirt seven times to run around on our petunia-scented pitches. And, as if to add insult to his growing list of footballing injuries, he's managed to get some game time in that sordid exhibition known as the League Cup, with a single appearance as a substitute.
