The leadership of Colombian soccer does not stop surprising… for worse. This Monday, the Colombian Football Federation announced a new friendly match for the Colombia selection, the last one before this sad 2022 ends, in which the team was left out of the World Cup in Qatar. will face Paraguay in Fort Lauderdale (United States).
What’s so weird about that? First of all, the date and time of the match: it will be played on November 19, at 8 p.m., 15 hours before the opening whistle of the World Cup in Qatar! If they wanted the world’s attention, it will be because it is the only national team match that night. Earlier, at 6 in the morning in Colombia, Turkey and the Czech Republic will play. And there is nothing more, because the world of football, the serious world, will think about the World Cup that will come hours later.
What is this friendly for Néstor Lorenzo?
Which team will play that day? It seems difficult, for example, that the coach Néstor Lorenzo can count on the players of the two microcycles that he scheduled in October (among other things, crossed in full local competition, with the consequent damage to the clubs).
Dimayor will be largely to blame for this, since it was not able to put together a small tournament thinking that the main leagues in the world stopped activity on November 14. If Fifa dates have never been respected in Colombia and always, on those weekends, there is a League, because this time things were worse: as the National Team was eliminated from the World Cup, because the League lasted until November 30, when the Qatar 2022 group stage will continue.
The match against Paraguay, thinking of giving the local base a game, is, to say the least, inopportune: for that same weekend, initially (because in the Dimayor everything changes on the fly), the fifth date of the semi-final home runs is scheduled , in which a finalist may even be defined.
Is Lorenzo going to get soccer players from the teams that play the great goal of the year? If we stick to the background of the first leg of the Copa Colombia final, anything is possible. Among other things, that was another very poorly scheduled date by Dimayor, who put a final match on a Fifa date. Weird? In Dimayor, it never is.
If Lorenzo doesn’t call the local media, he exposes himself to the criticism that it doesn’t make sense for him to look for players and set up microcycles to then get to the games and put on the usual ones. As it happened in the double date of September, in which he appealed to the players of the last three qualifiers and just gave some popcorn to new players. And only one from the local tournament, Andrés Llinás.
This being the case, Lorenzo will very surely attend to this commitment with the same base as in recent years, again thinking about the short term and putting together a team with a view to the start of the tie, in March. They are credited with the idea of working. But put a little order.
The tournament of Ascencio…
Jose Orlando Ascencio
Sports Sub-Editor
@josasc
More sports news
#Colombia #national #team #friendly #world #cup #crossed #opinion