Falcao's health status next month does the NT no good. After Tuesday our next WCQ's are in August/September.
Wow..... I was like WTF are these people doing chanting "ole" against Bolivia with a 1-0 lead....i was embarrassed !!! I used to make fun of Mexican fans chanting Ole during a 1-1 against U.S but this was sooooooooo weak.
It seemed they were okay with the 1-0 win and not pushing for the second. This team needs a new manager. One that'll make these guys run preferably
OK...soooo i've always believed in a process and have always believed in Pekerman but for the first time ever since he took over i was like WOW... who are we.. the team look so disorganized it was sad. I saw cuadrado during the first half go from right back to left forward.. i saw mateus at some point playing the James role... It was emabarrasing. !! I have seen Colombia play some pretty crappy games during this era but last night i felt like i was watching the under-20 team !!...
Hard to NOT agree with some of the comments around here. Horrible game to keep my 7 year old for! Anyhow, this match was all about how do we break down 11 men defending. You're technically only working in a 40 yard space, with 21 players containing that space, it's not something that's not going to be broken down easily. I'm sure we've all played pick up when "too many guys" show up for a game and it's nearly impossible to make a play. So this is all where a DT has have a game plan. It's almost like you have to do an 'audible' and come thru with a pre-tested play. It's almost the only way to break down the lines. But after minute 30 or so, our players were gassed. Not sure if it was the temp but no one was making any other run into space. We still have the schedule somewhat in our favor. 3 points is better than 0 points. Only Brazil is CLEARLY a strong not or two above the rest. ALL others look very inconsistent. Tuesday's match will be a huge deciding factor. REGARDLESS of result, Pekerman can't just be fired. To think someone (anyone) is just 'better', and will steer the ship with 4-5 games to go would be foolish. What would that prove?
I think that most players and staff were expecting a narrow win because they knew Bolivia was gonna park 2 bigass busses in their box. What really pisses me off though, is that Pekerman and his staff knowing this played bacca instead of Duvan. These people had to see the glaring difference in size between Bacca and Duvan during the many training sessions the team had before the game. So how the ******** did Pekerman think its was a good idea to play a smaller guy like bacca in a box jam packed with people defending. We needed someone with size like Duvan in the box to outmuscle their box flooded with defenders. We also needed someone like Cardona from the begining to shoot from outside the box and potentially get some early goals for us. Instead we tried going up against 2 parked buses with a bunch of little motorcycles. We never stood a chance (to blow out) with that initial line up. Maybe the formation was good. But the player selection yesterday really has me scratching my head. And this isn't the first time either. We've played 13 games, and all 13 games besides the game against Ecuador in Quilla have been pretty much the same type of failed experiment as yesterday. We can blame the players, but I'm seeing the player selection as one of the biggest underlying factors yesterday and that on Pekerman unfortunately. That said, we still have a big chance to qualify if we by some miracle stop ********ing around and end the experiments. We have 5 finals left to play. Everygame from here on out is a final imo.
Muriel's injury appeared to destroy the gameplan. Before he went down, Colombia had broken through the Bolivian defense twice. It never happened again. Looking over recent results, you can see anomalies like these completely stuttering our matches. Against both Arentina and Brazil we gave up silly fouls that wound up in free kick goals early on in the match, effectively making our triple DMs useless. The rain completely changed the tide of the Uruguay match.
While it may by foolish, its slowly becoming a trend in the game. Now I know we can't compare club football with national teams, but look at Leicester City. They instantly changed under new management with a little over half of the season gone by. Same shit with Chelsea etc. If we have the same type of change in direction here after replacing our manager, it'll prove that our manager had lost the locker room and we would most likely have not qualified. Thats what it'll prove. We still have 5 games to go with a total of 18 games in the qualifying campaign. If we do not get a result in Ecuador, we're already gonna be in the mid to lower half of the table. If we go by what we've seen this entire qualifying campaign, we will mostly continue to see more of the same. We thought everything would change or improve after the disaster in Montevideo, but it just hasn't. Something tells me this guy has lost the team since getting knocked out of the WC by the worst Brazil probably ever. I think we owe the world to Pekerman, and I was one of his strongest supporters from the beginning, but I'm just not liking what I'm seeing. Something doesn't seem right.
I doubt he's lost the team. Teams going through that typically do not look happy, and these guys still seem like a very united squad. You don't hear or see anything indicating internal division. What is most definitely missing is the leadership and fighting spirit on the field. Yepes has not been replaced, and the next in-line either got injured or passed over (Abel, Zuniga, Zapata). Giving James the armband was Pekerman's biggest mistake. Our play is already too centered around him as is.
I think some comments here are drastic exaggerations. Yes we should of score more, yes bacca sucked, yes Uribe played like a scared 10 year old. However, Bolivia played with all 11 in box, had 1-2 shots all game. This Bolivian team played very good defense. Very disciplined in the back, and keep in mind they play this style for at least a decade of football. We do need to work on passing smarter and not rush the play. But then again, as a devil advocate... Colombia hasn't played as a team in months. It's hard to get chemistry going in 2 weeks of training.
If being displeased and asking for a change after 2-3 years of playing badly/having a dry run of goals is a drastic exaggeration then count me in. People aren't pissed because of a one off game. We've had about 10 off games of 13 games played so far in this qualifying campaign, not counting 2 lackluster Copa America runs. These numbers speak for themselves. This is why people are making "drastic exaggerations".
all NT's have that same challenge - don't they? certainly didn't prevent brazil from putting up 4 goals against Uruguay. although i will note the following: Italy 2006 had the luxury of "NT intrasquad games" every week b/c all their key players played for Juventus or Milan Spain 2010 had the luxury of "NT intrasquad games" every week b/c all their key players played for Barca or Real Madrid Germany 2014 had the luxury of "NT intrasquad games" every week b/c all their key players played for Bayern or Dortumund
Carlos Sanchez - MOTM Against Bolivia #ElJugadorFCF del triunfo ante Bolivia: @carlossanchez6 pic.twitter.com/v8NCx1wjc8— Selección Colombia (@FCFSeleccionCol) March 24, 2017
More or less Bolivia has an intrasquad.. most play in Bolivia and they all start. @jpa I'm displeased that we don't score. But this is problem before Pekerman too.
Guys stop making excuses for Pekerman. Bolivia also fielded a B team against us. That's not being mentioned either. Name me 1 game after the WC we played well. And if you say the 6 goal game we raped some shit Middle eastern team you are part of the problem
We can't validate whats currently taking place by using the pinto era as a point of reference. We should aspire to never get back to those low levels ever again. We peaked in 2014, but we didn't plateau or continue rising as we should've. We've been slowing declining little by little since 2015. We need to hit the brakes or this thing could keep going into a steep decline back to the pinto era. I just noticed you also posted the futbolred article that gives us some more numbers: http://www.futbolred.com/seleccion-...a-seleccion-siete-fechas-sin-anotar-+16843399
dude, Bolivia has no A team. And we're not too far from that stat as well. Chumacero is a key player but regardless, that team that showed up in Barranquilla was defensively strong team ready to frustrate the heck out of Colombia. And almost pulled it off.
I would like to mention something here. The way Bolivia was playing was eerily similar to the way Chile played in regards to gamesmanship and time wasting. IT seemed like they were dying in agony on the ground wasting time for most of the game (They probably saw the faking tactics Chile used in game film and applied it. That is my theory and I am sticking to it.) IT makes me wonder if Barranquilla really is the advantage it once was. IT seems like the last few games the weather and humidity has taken its toll on Colombia as much as it has the other team so it is more of a detriment when teams apply their laying on the floor for minutes on end tactics. IT clearly affects the rhythm. the timing and the way the game is played. The Federation should complain about this to the officials and the CONMEBOL officially. The Brazilian refs should have also taken control of the match immediately and said that is enough of your time wasting shenanigans.
that time wasting, is one of the things that has to change for Conmebol. It really just gets to be so boring. Mind you Cuadrado's constant diving doesnt help our cause either. At the very least players should be carded even if postgame after further review of play where there is intent to fool the ref.
Guys, cut the bullshit with these excuses. It's all true and annoying but it doesn't happen only in CONMEBOL. You said that Bolivia defended with 11 players? And what did we do? Instead to play clever, we kept consistently to try the middle through balls or long balls to the middle of the balls. Where's to operate the flanks more? Where's the double - pass game between creative players like James, Mac and Cuadrado? Where's Bacca to co op with them? Nothing! Vs. The weakest team and in Quilla. So I am sorry, I can't find an excuse for this game. We are the only one to blame.
I see what you are saying Pibe but you have to say there are observations made in this thread about this match that can't be denied. Almost a perfect storm for Bolivia to get the point. I will give them credit too cause they were disciplined for the most part. Thankfully the upset did not happen. As for where are the flanks and the double passes and such... ... I think having a guy like Muriel come out and a green guy like Quiñones coming in for him did not help with the cohesion at all and threw a wrench into the plans of Pekerman.
Naw my bad. It was actually Pibe10 that posted it. But I think you were in that thread, if not heres the article again: If it isn't peks fault than whos fault is it? The players? if its the players theres a serious issue cause Cuadrado just scored a header for juve last weekend. Bacca has scored for Milan, maybe not as much as before but hes scored for them. Everyone besides James, ospina and a few fringe players is performing decently well at the club level so whats the excuse? Every national team gets the same amount of time to train.
I think we are framing the question incorrectly. The question should not be what is the excuse. The question should be can the team wake up and score some goals? Every team goes through ups and down in this qualification process and every team seems to have some deficiencies. Look at Uruguay losing at home to Brazil 4-1. Chile tied Bolivia 0-0 at home (even though due to their stupidity it counts as three for the Chilenos.) Argentina lost to Ecuador at home. Brazil had their issues at the start too. Grinding out 3 points is what we are going to have to do these 5 final match days and we will see if Pekerman can lead this team to Russia. Then at the end we can evaluate things fairly.