So Rick Dog do you give more credit to Bielsa and the Argie coaches you had that won you titles or the fact you had a young Alexis Sanchez, Vidal and co Without James we could have potentially qualified to both 14 and 18 but no way do we do as well
Of course you need players but you also need a coach. You can't discredit what Pekerman did because James is a good player
To me, the only coach who really made an impact coaching our national team, was Bielsa, whom changed our mentality about the game. Borghi, tried to do diferent things with some new players, changing many of the things that Bielsa had done before him, with very bad results , which at the time meant him his job, being replaced by Sampaoli, whom what he mostly did was to eliminate the new stuff Borghi attempted to impose, and went back doing what Bielsa had done before, regaining the path of success we had at the time Bielsa quit from our team. When Sampaoli thought we wouldn't win anything more with our team, as the team was starting to show certain decline (mainly due to age of players and injuries), he quit and Pizzi took over, whom let himself ride along the path our players took him with. Tactically speaking, Sampaoli and Pizzi did very little for our team, but to not recognize any merit at all would also be wrong from my part (they did help, but not that much). Their biggest flaw though, is that they did not do anything related to the renovation of our players in the squad, reasons why currently our team is kind of old. Rueda was hired to somehow change this last issue, and till now has done a decent job. . . . All of them (including Bielsa) have had the benefit of having a strong base of players, as fortunately we had a very good generation of players. Without which, not even Bielsa would've achieved many things with. I strongly believe that if Bielsa would've never quit when he did, at this time we would be champions of the world (not kidding). In Chile, those of us whom believe this, are usually called by my fellow country men, "Bielsa's widows", and so football speaking, I am a "Bielsa widow".
Not saying that!! I’m saying the real game changer from 2011 on was our lord and savior James was finally fking called up to the senior team You can go back to prior post and some of you wanted him to be Macbellys sub!!! James is what changed everyone for us and even when we played badly or shitty game plans from Pekerman we would win because James would save us. Again Pekerman 2012-2014 deserves a statute but 2015-2018 he didn’t want to be here and was an awful coach
Let it go. LOL. I think everyone here agrees Pekerman lost some of his edge between 15-18; maybe not to the degree to your observations, but there were lots of moving parts as to why the team was so flat last cycle.
it was a difficult time for us, i've already talked about this a ton of times in more detail so I won't bother again, we all know how crzd is.
Likewise. Everyone here pretty much has pointed out various observations that are in some ways right and some ways not the full picture. It’s just annoying that coaching comparisons are already being made. Gotta give this current process time.
We haven’t played anyone good yet and while we haven’t been scored on it’s not like we are winning 5-0. What we are doing tho is not fully depending on James and actually attacking. Something we hadn’t seen in a while. We are still insanely wasteful with our chances. The coach is new and needs time. I just dislike this cult of pekerman many of you are under. Chile is the 1st test Uruguay the 2nd Then the final exam After that he has a lot of time before next copa America to fix any problems he finds
I was not under the “cult of pekerman” I was very vocal about his lack of tactics 15-18 but at the same time I didn’t call for his head like you did so frequently. I’ll put it to you this way, for all pekerman’s faults do you honestly think a different manager last cycle would have done much different given the injuries, lack of club form throughout the last cycle? Would a different manager have called up Quintero for the World Cup also? Maybe one day when we have a few trophies on the shelf and our expectations become very high will we be in a position to hire and fire managers when things go slightly awry. Sometimes it seems you want the team to be run like Chelsea or Real Madrid - revolving door. Yes we were not clinical as we all would have liked this group stage. I was pissed that Duvan missed a sitter in one of the games and we didn’t score on any of the corners against Qatar. And I was getting anxious when we would have one too many or too few touches when near the final 18. I hear ya what you’re saying and that is a valid point. That is what probably separates us from a team like Brazil who really knows how to crank things into 5th gear (i.e Peru game).
Honestly I rather we stop talking about Pekerman. He does deserve credit as even with a bad 2015 CA he at least got us to the semi-finals and secure 3rd place the following year of the 2016 edition. He did influence our football to a good direction but his tatics were hurting us the longer we held on. Honestly his lack of drive to push and moviate the players to not be purely defensively like how he likes it needed to go away. I myself defended this guy for so long but even I realized that we needed to move on. Regardless, NO ONE should ever complain about this man because he brought us back onto the globe after the shitty era we had from not advancing 3 damn world cups. Pekerman holds passion for Colombia and he always cared about our interests even if we didn't agree on how he approached things.
I dont want to be dramatic(and i dont think is happening or will happen) but remember ecuador quinteros first matches......were great 12 points of 12 at the end he was shit after...then the conslusion was easy: quinteros eas ysing the savings of rueda. The same queiroz have recognized the good team that he received from pekerman....and have available a good universe of players is to have a NT...ask to argentina
You never shared us the pictures of the matches that you attended! Are you still in Brazil for the rest of the matches?
Fun fact: in 1999 colombia was leader of the group with 9 points then was eliminated by chile in second round. Hope ueiroz isnt our new javier alvarez
I remember listening to that match back in 1999 on the radio here in Chicago. (The games were on pay-per-view back then and my Parents did not even have cable.) IT was gut- wrenching in the moment but looking back on it Chile was the better team. 20 years later we clearly have the better team. Hopefully we play like it on Friday.
It still had the remnants of the ZA-SA '98 team that was very talented and attacking minded. They played at a way better tempo than we did. We had guys like Victor Bonilla and Hamilton Ricard starting. They were the better team that day and in that tournament.
Not to mention it was the very first tournament we played without El Pibe in what seemed like forever. Trying to transition away from him and his brilliant #10 leadership was not easy. We had Betancourt who was little and scrappy and decent but nothing close.