The end of time has come for the Qatar World Cup qualifier. These are the days of the final judgment for the moribund Colombian National Team, which must beat a Bolivia of substitutes and almost youthful, on Thursday in Barranquilla, and the Venezuela of José Pékerman, tomorrow at eight o’clock in Puerto Ordaz. Beating them today seems like a daunting task for a team that hasn’t scored a goal for seven games. An eternity. That is why he already received the holy oils.
Bolivia and Venezuela are two of the worst teams in the area, but for this Colombia they represent a difficulty as great as facing Brazil or Argentina or Peru or Paraguay or Ecuador.
And it won’t just be enough to beat these two minor teams: Colombia requires a whole chain of results. It is unlikely that all the links will come together. The specialized firm Matics -which presents itself as “sports data science”- revealed that Colombia’s probability of achieving fourth place and thus qualifying directly for the World Cup is “0.0001 percent”, and that of being fifth and dispute the playoff “is 3 percent.” As in life, football shows us a scenario in which, once again, science and faith are in opposite corners.
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A call that had no surprises
Reinaldo Rueda, the coach, did what was expected of him: summon his players, the experienced ones, the renowned ones who got us into trouble and who will try not to drown on the shore. Very difficult thing, almost impossible. And if Falcao, Zapata and Mina hadn’t been injured, I’m sure he’d also call them. It’s up to tribuneros to ask the green and mature local League or ‘Cucho’ Hernández or Rodallega or Jhon Córdoba to throw a responsibility that is not theirs.
And, beware: the controversial James from the exotic and minor league of Qatar, who has not played for almost two weeks, is still, perhaps, the most talented of all. Go see! Even if he spends it playing ‘Call of duty’ on Twitch, he has a different quality. So calculate! For this reason, perhaps we are where we are. Another leap of faith. It’s just that not even Luis Díaz, a wonderful and undoubted Liverpool sensation, has been well in recent games.
It is not necessary to remove even an iota of responsibility from Rueda: he will have to render his accounts. But it is the players who have to put their chest and face when whatever happens. To all of them, to the great and renowned ones, to those who made and make the base of this team, to those who put on the national shirt after playing in the Champions League and the Europa League.
The intellectuals of the game, many of them great ex-soccer players from the 90s who burned the National Team at the stake of their vanities in the World Cups in the United States-94 and France-98 (don’t forget that!), and others much less brilliant players who participated in the consecutive eliminations of the World Cup in Japan and Korea, Germany and South Africa, blame all the blame for the National Team’s coma on the coachand discuss the reason for the hole in the roscón and analyze why the calao is not toast: the immense responsibility lies with the players who missed unusual goals.
For the sake of discussion, I share that the team was not showy, nor overwhelming, nor did it have genius or offensive clarity. It’s easy to get stuck in that perception. That is why it is good to rely on data: according to the officials, in this tie considered the poorest and leveled at the bottom, Colombia (187) has finished off more times than Uruguay (184), Ecuador (180) and Peru (162), but his percentage of conversion, of effectiveness, is the penultimate (12 percent), below Ecuador (second, 18 percent), Chile and Uruguay (fifth and sixth, 14 percent) and Peru (seventh, 13 percent) .
(In other news: Marc Márquez: this was the terrible accident in MotoGP, video)
I insist: for the sake of discussion, let’s accept “the bad game and the terrible offensive performance” that is proclaimed, but the facts say that Colombia has finished off more times than those direct rivals, but its efficiency is obviously less. So whose is the biggest responsibility? When it’s everyone’s fault, nobody’s fault…
The final judgment of the National Team in elimination has arrived and when what has to happen happens, when the dilemma between the numerical science of probabilities and the faith and hope of going further is resolved, everyone will have to be held accountable. But the first players, of course.
Meluk tells him…
Gabriel Meluk
Sports Editor
@MelukLeCuenta
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