So you're Vizuete. What do you do over the next 5 months?

So Vizuete is in a comfortable position. He took over the team during an emergency and now he's gotten us out of last place and very close to the qualifying zone. Until the Venezuela match, he was undefeated, and you can argue that we struggled due to missing 4 key players (Benitez, Valencia, Castillo, and Hurtado).

But overall, Vizuete has the support right now of the fans, the press, and the federation, which gives him freedom to pursue his vision and ideas for how to get us to South Africa and build for the future.

So here are some of the things I would do over the next 5 months:

1. Fly around the world to scout and meet with players that we haven't seen yet, including Christian Noboa and Rorys Aragon. Watch them play and talk with their coaches regarding their strengths and weaknesses, and start to give them consideration for upcoming friendlies. Also do the same for current players, especially those that are new with their teams, to get a sense of the environment and also show them some support.

2. Talk to Ivan Kaviedes and make him understand that it's his last chance, does he want to take it and get serious, or if not, then wish him the best.

3. Start finding some players to add depth to the team. We need to get some depth in the attack as well as the defense. This may sound obvious but remember when he took over the team he was only "interim coach", and even then he needed to prove himself, so he couldn't do anything too crazy. Now I think he can take some chances, and maybe give some guys an opportunity that previously haven't been on the radar.

4. Work to motivate Felipe Caicedo and Joffre Guerron, who seem to have some problems adapting to their current situations in Europe.

5. Schedule friendlies at home, in Quito. We need to make sure we win every home game, so we want our players to be as acclimated as possible, especially the ones playing abroad. I live in NY, but the game against Colombia was useless from a footballing standpoint.

6. Schedule friendlies against easy teams. Our guys need to get confidence and killer instinct back. We need to play some games where we can win 3-0 or more, just to remember the feeling of really destroying an opponent and get some guys like Palacios an opportunity to score goals with the national shirt.

Those are just a few ideas, I'll be interested to see what happens. 5 months is a long time, and a lot could happen, including injuries or even new stars emerging, look at Luis Bolanos, Joffre Guerron, and Isaac Mina and how they were not really known factors this time last year. Vizuete strikes me as a very smart and tactical coach who knows his players, so perhaps he can continue his overall coaching success over the next year.

 

I'm happy to hear Zura is getting playing time, and looks like he had a good game (2 assists).

But I gotta say, the Australian league is really a poor man's MLS.

 

Well, given the latest news, a replacement for Hurtado is going to have to happen sooner than later. He is out for 6 months, but then he will probably not be in game shape for a while. Plus he is 34 years old and is not likely to recuperate like before. We must start thinking of the possibility that his national career might be over.

I would say this must be Vizuete's priority during the break.

 

Another objective should be to get Valencia settled in as a central midfielder. Apparently he is beginning to play that role at Wigan, according to this article: http://www.teamtalk.com/football/story/0,16368,1809_4370258,00.html

This is great news. I think Valencia needs to be groomed to take over the attacking midfield role, which we haven't really had since Aguinaga. Mendez is the closest we've developed, but Mendez likes playing deeper.

I believe this solves a lot of our problems in the midfield, and allows Guerron and Bolanos to stay out wide.