Fin de la novela José Pekerman. Me informan que el DT argentino estaba motivado y con ganas, pero lo pensó mucho y prefiere no dirigir ahora. Incluso su representante, Pascual Lezcano, está en Uruguay e iba a viajar a reunirse con él en Argentina, pero no se dará. Duro golpe.— Fernando Petrocelli (@fpetrocelli) January 15, 2020
Yup, that came out of nowhere. Kudos to their federation for thinking outside of the box but it is a strange fit. People thought we had it bad signing an unproven Euro guy "so late in the process"... ...This guy is less accomplished than Queiroz, and just has a couple of months to learn his player pool and implement his philosophy. Technically 3 days with Euro/foreign based players before qualifiers. Which, oh by the way are against Argentina and Uruguay in March. Good luck with that.
Caught a bit of the Uruguay-Chile match. For Chile, I'm recognizing dudes like Vidal, Medel, Aranguiz...some of these guys were playing since the 2010 qualifiers. On the other hand, I don't think there's a single Uruguayan who played as recently as the 2018 qualifiers. The average age of the starting lineup was 25! They've always done a great job of constantly replacing retirees with younger players, but this is an INSANE generation shift. Chile's average age was 27.5--an average pushed way up by Medel and Aranguiz. You know what ours was yesterday? 29.5. That average has only been superseded by Venezuela and Peru. We complain about James, Cuadrao, and--especially--Falcao all the time. But the truth is the WHOLE base has gotten VERY old. Even Barrios, Mina, and Lerma are a month away from being 29-30.
worrisome. we need Puerta to play and give Rios minutes. we do have some promising center-backs in the MLS as well. def need younger strikers as well lmao but like you said to CRZD, who else is there at the moment?
We also have a lot of youth. Cuadrado at 35 and Vargas at 34 is def impacting the avg. In terms of the squad: - Vargas is 34, but Vasquez and Mier could play and are younger. Vargas also seems like kind of keeper that is a late bloomer and could tend for ages. - Lucumi is 25, Cuesta 24, Mina 29 in two weeks, Munoz 27, Machado 30. But Machado is a late bloomer too and while we only just found him, we should succession plan. - Barrios is 30 next month, Lerma 29 next month, but I think the recambio will be ready with Rios 23, Puerta 20, Solis 18, Castaño 22 at that position. Alzate 25 and Atuesta 26, could get considered but seems younger guys may be ready sooner. - at 10 - Carrascal 25 and Yaser 19 seem ready to take torch from James and Quintero. - On the wings Arias 25, Diaz 26, and Sini 24 are all prime age. - Upfront Duran is the future at 19, Cassierra is prime age at 26 (and fulfilling the promise that sent him to Ajax as a kid kinda later than expected) and Borré is gonna be 28. All this to say, if we just make Sugar happy and keep C4 off the pitch our avg will be plenty young!
Results aren't surprisingly given that the top 4 right now won their matches as expected. Although us and Argentina scoring only one at home each could be a bad sign for the next round. Bolivia and Chile surprisingly managed to get a single goal back despite the utter dominance, making me think of how we would score plenty of goals but get top comfortable and just get scored on for no good reason. Discipline is key.
Argentina getting a 0-3 win in Bolivia is the perfect result; that red card secured their victory after their first goal. Hopefully we can get as fortunate. And Ecuador looks to secure a win against Uruguay after being down a goal which would put them at 0 points. Venezuela and Paraguay...nothing worth mentioning.
that Ecuador game seemed epic, they were down 1-0 to Uruguay and came from behind. Idk how it ended because i didn't have time to watch
Looks like Mexico officially called up Quiñones for the Copa America playoffs against Honduras. Sucks, but he is Mexican now. He is not the only Colombian to be called up by another National team though. 38 year old striker Jair Reinoso has been called up by Bolivia. I think that is a good fit for him and the team even though his best days are probably behind him. He could still give Martins Moreno a decent attacking partner. That guys always seemed to be attacking up front by himself isolated,so Reinoso can be a good supporting striker if that is how their new manager wants to play.
We knew about Quiñones for a good while and did nothing with him. I don't blame him to want to represent a culture that appericiates him and intends to call him up regularly. No hard feelings as I do think this happens in football often enough.
Yup. He has a wife and family now in Mexico so I do not blame him at all. Just sucks we did not give him a chance earlier.
meh... he's played 7 years in Mexico. Way too much of a comfort zone to play in Mexico that long. Not the highest test for a NT prospect.
I personally look at how a player plays (style) and if his skillset can help us at the moment. That is more important to me than where he is playing.
Well that's rarely been the case since Pekerman. Hence why FPC, Mexico and MLS players were overlooked. I would even toss in Morelos in the SFL at this prime was tossed aside. Previously, in the Maturana era, since we didnt have too many players abroad, we had to play FPC players. But even when we started to have more presence in Mexico (early 2000s) and had standout players killing it in that league, guys like Luis Gabriel Rey, Chitiva, Frankie Oviedo were not called up easily. We would use our Argie league players and go anywhere but Mexico. Fast forward to today, we're kind of in the same boat. We're not playing the kind of futbol that plays for a killer #9. We haven't been for years. So we can put whoever we want, with whatever skillset you choose, no one is going to be the magic bullet. Cordoba + Casierra who have been on fire, are not seeing serious minutes on the NT. That's a darn shame. We have options
No one is saying anything about a magic bullet. Just wanted him to be given a chance and he was never called up at all.
Due to the crazy fans rioting debacle against Argentina and how it was handled by security and police in the Maracana there's talk that Brasil may be in serious trouble. Some are saying they may be forced to play at neutral fields or empty stadiums. Some are reporting that they may get deducted 3 points from the table. Not sure Brasil has ever had an embarrassing crises like this since winning their first World Cup.