This 2022 has two great events prepared for us in the coming months, starting with the CONCACAF Pre-World Cup in July and later, the U-20 World Cup that will be held in Costa Rica. That is why we spoke with Allan Martínez, journalist and content manager at MZ Sports Costa Rica to give us his impressions ahead of these tournaments.
What is the present of women’s soccer in Costa Rica?
It has grown quite a bit, it has had a very good rise. New clubs started to come in and now we have four of the eight traditional men’s football clubs that are currently in the first division. Currently, the champion is Liga Deportiva Alajuelense. Two-time national champion and undefeated for 28 games. The team has the largest number of national selected players and not only that, they have the largest number of fans. They are always local, whether in their Morera Soto stadium or in any other women’s soccer stadium.
After having several women’s football classics in which the Liga Deportiva Alajuelense itself has already had a maternity over Deportivo Saprissa, which is the most successful women’s football player, what we are experiencing is a tournament in which the Liga Deportiva Alajuelense is the team unstoppable. Something similar to what is happening with the Rayadas there in Mexico. They are the team to beat in this Apertura tournament here. And that only in the first division because, in the second division, which started about four weeks ago, there are also a large number of teams.
In the first there are only eight teams, but in the second there are 31 teams participating to look for a place in the first division and in the third division there are 82 teams fighting for four places in the second division, this is how we have the structure of major tournaments in women’s football and if we talk about minor leagues, you are shocked.
The U-20 World Cup is coming up in Costa Rica in August, what can you say about the Costa Rican national team?
There is still a lot to improve in the U-20 women’s team for the World Cup that we will have here next August because there has been very little time and a lot of work has been tried to do. There was even a change of coach in recent months and in order to give a better focus to the women’s team, they have had friendlies against Mexico, Spain and Chile. We have had friendlies in microcycles to be able to have the selected team in continuous movement.
What has perhaps affected us the most is that the players who were supposed to play in this World Cup, which should have been held in 2020, were lost. That generation of soccer players where we would have had Priscila Chinchilla, Stephanie Blanco, was lost. People who play abroad. They lose the age for the category and then they have to do a lot of work to find new soccer players and without having a tournament because of the pandemic. Now, at a structural level, we are ready for the World Cup to start.
Before the U-20 World Cup, the Pre-World Cup for the Costa Rican National Team is coming, how do you see Costa Rica for this Pre-World Cup?
In our group, on paper, the most difficult team is the Canadian team. However, there is a problem that we have here in Costa Rica and that is that many players from the base of the Panama team are playing here in our league, so they know us quite well and that can be a problem in the first game against the Panamanians, but I know that we have the sporting capacity to be able to beat Panama. We have to win two games and in the third game more than anything it is to see how we are against Canada, but it goes without saying that Canada and the United States are almost always at a higher level than our country.
We have the capacity to be able to qualify for the 2023 Australia/New Zealand World Cup because the group is extremely accessible compared to the group that Mexico had, for example, in which they do have the United States, in which they do have Jamaica. which is a quite complicated selection and it already left us out in 2018.
As a Tico, I hope that our country qualifies for the World Cup, we have the capacity to finish second in the group. It would be great to beat Canada as well. We have been the Central American team that is most complicated because they always beat us by the minimum, they never beat us by more than three goals.
#INTERVIEW #Allan #Martínez #ready #World #Cup #start