Hello, I am a French webmaster of a website dedicated to all world footballs and I’m preparing a whole report on different national teams that will take part of the next Word Cup (WC). In this view, I've already make report on Honduras, New Zealand, South Korea, Mexico and Uruguay and now, for next week, I'd like to focus on Chile. First, I have to admit that I have a special link with Chile. As I said I'm french and in 1998 I was living in Bordeaux and still remember what happened to Chile (I was a huge fan of Salas because of River Plate ^^) vs Italy. But what I really remember is the night after spent in Center town with Chilean fans partying like crazy. Since this, I still follow your national team (and your local football that I cover on my website). But I'm not here to discuss about the past, I'm here to focus on this 2010 WC and thus would like to ask you few questions. - Chile is back in the WC after 12 years. What did happen to Chile ? What can explain this ? - This dark period seems to be behing you now as your local clubs have shown this year for example in copa libertadores (I hope la 'U4 will reach the final, I'm following them since a while). I'll then ask you the reverse question : what did Chile change (if Chile changed something) ? How would you rate your local football compared to other south american footballs ? - Let's talk about Bielsa : designed as the main cause of Argentina failure in 2002 WC (even if he performed well after), he came to Chile at the beginning of 2007. Is El Loco loved in Chile or are people divided about him (as they always have been with him everywhere) ? How would you describe what he brought to Chilean NT ? - Talking about this WC. What do you think of your group ? What are your expectations for this WC ? - Most of European remember Zamorano and Salas as the top players of 1998's WC team, but for this WC they are no such players (I mean in terms of such level of celebrity in Europe (maybe Suazo ?)). I have to say that I really like guys like Medel and especially Mancilla. If you had to introduce some players, on which would you focus ? I'll stop here for the moment. Thank you in advance (and sorry for being so long - I always have too many things to say when I talk about football).
Hello Luc First of all, my english isn't good enough, but I'll do my best. I have a special link with Bordeaux btw, because 2 friends are living there since 2009. And I'm a fan of the "Matador" Salas too, I think he's the best Chilean player of the last 30 years. 1rst: a great generation of players. All of them made good campaigns in the U20 and U23 levels, in the SouthAmerican WCQ, and in some cases, in WC U20, between 2004 and 2009, and in the Espoirs de Toulon 2008 and 2009. They always ended between the top4 in South America when they were young (Bravo, Medel, Jara, Vidal, Carmona, Isla, Beausejour, Valdivia, Fernández, Sánchez, Suazo, González, etc). At that time, the coach of the U20 NT's was José Sulantay (U20 WC's 2005 and 2007). 2nd: a good coach, very very attacking-style, and irreverent like Bielsa. He gave to the NT players more discipline out/in the field. He changed the mentality of the players. Although some bad results at home (vs Paraguay and vs Brazil in Santiago), he never changed the attacking-style. I wouldn't do a mix between NT and local championship. Most of our NT players are not playing here, but in Europe, Mexico and Brazil&Argentina. And one of the best of them is playing in the Arab Emirates. IMO, our NT is one of the 5-6 best championships in America. The Brazilian, Argentine and Mexican leagues are the best ones, and after those championships, the Chilean, Ecuatorian and Peruvian leagues are getting better in the last years, at least if we consider only the international results in Libertadores and Sudamericana Cups. I think 90% of Chileans (if not 95%) love him. And the rest are waiting for the big event, the WC, to judge his work. In the case of Acosta, the things were 50-50 or 60-40 in terms of popularity, and he reached 1/8 finals in WC 1998. He brought to us a winner mentality, an attacking football style at home and OUT of Chile (this was the main difference). Historically we always were strong at home. But when we played in other countries, we used to play really bad, and we ended losing (except in Venezuela and Bolivia). The other change was, imo, the DISCIPLINE in the field and OUT the field. Bielsa doesn't accept indiscipline in their teams. Valdivia, the more talented Chilean player right now, has to wait nearly 1 year to play for this NT, after the scandal in the Copa América 2007. Could be worst, could be better. For sure Spain will qualifie, and Honduras looks like the weakest NT in the group. So aparently Switzerland will be our big rival for the 2nd spot. I do expect to qualifie in the 2nd place, but in this case, the next rival would be Brazil, so that would be the end of the WC for us. Brazil beated us in Chile and in Brazil during the WCQ, and also in the WC 98 in Paris. If we play against Portugal or Ivory Coast in 1/8 finals, I think that we could qualifie to 1/4 finals. My favourite player is GARY MEDEL, our "pitbull", a warrior and technical player. He can play as defender or midfielder, and allways does it very good. Another players to consider are: JORGE VALDIVIA, he's very popular and 90% of Chilean fans (including me) want that he plays as starter, instead of Fernández. But Bielsa loves Fernández... CLAUDIO BRAVO: a solid and underrated goalkeeper. Sadly he was injured during a couple of months this year. ALEXIS SÁNCHEZ: fast, talented, skillful and different to the rest. Sometimes individualist. HUMBERTO SUAZO: opportunist and strong. He's the southamerican top scorer. He's recovering of an injurie, but he'll play the WC in good form. WALDO PONCE: our sweeper, he played very good during the WCQ, he also can do goals and shooting free-kicks. Some people think that he's too slow to play as starter.
I have a special link with France too since the colors of the flag are the same, and the fact that I just LOOOOOOVE FRENCH fries. j/p Zamorano was the greatest ever from Chile, Salas not far behind. Yup, it's been a while, I must say suprisingly so since in the qualifiers for 2002 we were actually pretty good but ended up in LAST place. In those qualifiers we even beat Brazil 3-0, but everything went downhill from that point on. I think it had A LOT to do with the subpar leadership of Nelson Acosta (your typical small south american team mentality; "defend with 11 men if you are up by 1 at home or tied abroad") and Zamorano stopped playing that year since he was getting old as well. Yes it does seem to be over, a combination of new generation players and a new coach with a new winner mentality. After the 1998 era players began developing and playing well, more Chilean players started to leave for europe and the competition began to get a lot harder. This is the time when Pizarro and Tello became our best mid fielders and left to Europe, Tello kind of fell off, but Pizarro has been up there since as he has shown the over these last years with Roma. You asked whether something changed and what certainly changed was our sucker mentality which we have Bielsa to thank for. This guy doesn't care who Chile plays against but we go out there and try to win, not by 1-0 by as many goals as we can get, and never put 9-11 men to defend like Acosta used to do. When we played against Brazil this qualifiers we played better than them. In fact I would say that I expected us to win when the game was 2-2 in the second half. We were driving their defense crazy, and then in two counter attacks back to back they scored 2 goals on us in less than 3 minutes. Then we learned our defense is weak, VERY weak. And this is something I don't agree with Bielsa, since our defense is weak we shouldn't play the 3 4 3 he likes to play, we should at least have 4 defenders, specially against a scoring machine like Brazil. People love him. Some disagree with little things like what I told you and also we rather see Valdivia play as creator instead of Matiaz Fernandez. The passes Valdivia gives are amazing. Hopefully he realizes this before the WC. Another thing which might be overlooked abroad is discipline. This guy must be a drill instructor behind closed doors, because no one in the national team gets out of hand. Players like Vidal, Medel, Valdivia, Contreras, have all stayed in line with him. As a matter of fact this guy Iturra got called to the NT the other day with the pre WC players and he got cut in less than 2 minutes because on a friendly he almost injures the other player. He has zero tolerance for stupidity, which all of the Chileans are loving right now. Since our defense is weak, we defend well in the mid field. We don't let other teams attack. A lot of the goals that were scored on us, such as the ones Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil amongst others scored on us were defensive mistakes. We were trying to start the attack and a bad pass here, and bang the other team scored. We play very risky, we don't like to clear the ball much, if we're get the ball back in the area we like to get to offense with passes, which most of the time work, but in can also bite you in the ass. I think the general idea is that we are going to win against Honduras and Switzerland but the game is up in the air with Spain. It seems that even our news casters don't want to face Brazil in the WC, everyone seems to believe is easier to end up first in our group than to be able to beat Brazil in quarter finals. If we don't face brazil I think we can reach semi's or even finals depending on who we play. But with that said I don't underestimate Honduras or Switzerland. Honduras seems to have a very good and fast team. Their forwards are big too which is a problem for us since our defense is SUPER weak on crosses. Yeah everyone remembers them, I wish we had this team with those 2 forwards to lead us. That 98 team was a great team, I just wish we had a different coach. We do have players that are good. Not like them, they were superstars, we just have stars. Alexis Sanchez and humberto Suazo are the most widely known at the moment, everyone expects Sanchez to end up in a huge team after the WC when he showcases his skills to the world. Jorge Valdivia will show his worth this world cup if given the chance, he doesn't get looked at as anything since he's been playing in United Emirates for the past year or so. But in 08 he was the best player in Brazil, he is loved so much by Palmeiras fans that if you look at his youtube videos all you see is "Mago Volta" which means Wizard come back in portuguese. Is cool I feel the same way. good luck and post the link so we cann see it
thank you guys for the answers Valdivia seems to be an interesting player if you prefer him to Fernandez. For what I've seen from this last, I'm really waiting to see Valdivia. I'll prepare the report and come back to you If others want to participate, do not hesitate, I'm still around here on this forum
hello, just wanted to tell you that the report has now been published. If you read french, it is available here : http://lucarne-opposee.fr/index.php/dossiers/coupe-du-monde-2010/2653-lucarne-mondiale-chili Thank you for your help. Do not hesitate to give me feedback. and good luck for the WC (plz beat the spanish ^^)
Valdivia is more like Iniesta...Matias is more like Kaka.... An important element to a playmaker like Kaka is to stay in top fitness levels...if they loose that extra acceleration and turn they are in trouble...so much time in the bench has really harmed Matias physically. That is why Chileans prefer Valdivia even if he plays in a weaker league.
thats the thing about fans though, they don't see the whole game. Carmona was on a radio saying that 90% of what Mati does goes unseen, that when he plays he makes his job (Carmona's) 10x easier because the rival team's holding midfielders are too well marked by Mati to 'sumarse' in attack. Mati esta hecho para partidos mas dificiles, porque tiene mas marca, mas fisico y CUANDO RECIBE DE ESPALDAS SE PUEDE LLEVAR CON VELOCIDAD A LOS MEDIOCAMPISTAS (como lo hizo ante brasil y argentina) Valdivia necesita recibir con espacios y no de espaldas... etan hechos para diferentes partidos