It took Néstor Lorenzo 26 games, two long years, to know defeat at the helm of the Colombian national team. His worthy team lost the Copa América final on Sunday in extra time against Argentina, with a solitary goal from Lautaro Martínez, but he has more than enough reasons to keep his head held high, as he asked his players to do, who gave their all on the pitch in Miami. “We lost, but I don’t feel it as a defeat, it’s something strange. I feel that the boys came out victorious from the entire tournament,” claimed the gifted pupil of José Pékerman after the match, who has regained the country’s football prestige.
When asked what he meant by having a good Copa America, the Colombian coach was direct in his answer: winning it. “The objective is to win every match,” he has repeated like a mantra. It didn’t happen, but even in the midst of disappointment he kept a reserve of optimism. “We had several matches with situations that made us reinvent ourselves. We are in a very good moment. The team has room for improvement, and we hope to have a great performance in the future,” he said at the Hard Rock Stadium, on the night of a final overshadowed by incidents at the entrance of the fans. After its outstanding participation in the continental tournament, Colombia will burst into the top ten teams of the next Fifa ranking. There is no shortage of reasons to console itself.
The Tricolor, led by a rejuvenated James Rodriguez, who won the award for best player of the Cup, has been able to straighten out the course, step by step, after the inevitable shipwreck in the qualifying rounds for the World Cup in Qatar. It is no longer that melancholic and broken team. Colombia has reconciled with its national team. Lorenzo’s merit goes beyond having recovered James for the cause and having taken advantage of the inexhaustible dribbling of Lucho Diaz, the Liverpool winger. They are accompanied by a solid and identifiable base that includes goalkeeper Camilo Vargas (Atlas); Davinson Sanchez (Galatasaray) in the center of defense, Daniel Muñoz at right back and a midfield in which the battling Jefferson Lerma, Muñoz’s teammate at Crystal Palace, John Arias, Libertadores champion with Fluminense; and Richard Rios, the Palmeiras midfielder who came from futsal, stand out.
“Lorenzo exercises a leadership that is unusual in our country,” reflected one editorial of The viewer on how much society has to learn from this team. “There is ambition, of course, otherwise he would not have said from the beginning that his objective in this Copa América was to win it. But his interventions are never arrogant or arrogant; his focus is on the collective, the recognition that a team triumphs if and only if its members support each other.”
Along the way, Colombia went on to record its longest unbeaten streak ever, surpassing a record that dated back to 1994. In total, there were 28 matches; 25 of them during the Lorenzo era, with 19 wins and 6 draws. They included several prestigious victories. For the first time, they defeated Brazil in the qualifiers (2-1), with an emotional double from Lucho Díaz; they won friendlies against Germany (0-2) and Spain (0-1); and they gave themselves an epic victory over Uruguay in the Copa América semi-final itself, a dizzying match in which Colombia held out with one man less for the entire second half.
The streak only ended against Messi’s Argentina, led by Lionel Scaloni, the world champions, who in turn have lost only two of their last 62 matches – the World Cup opener against Saudi Arabia and in qualifying against Uruguay. Lautaro Martínez’s goal in the 112th minute of the Miami final ended an unbeaten streak that lasted 894 days. Colombia’s last defeat had also been against the Albiceleste, on February 1, 2022, in a match for the Qatar qualifiers that ended with the same scoreline.
“Along with Xabi Alonso at Bayer Leverkusen, Scaloni and Lorenzo are the two greatest technical discoveries in the world. There are no better ones,” he praised them – and compared them – in the pages of Time from Bogotá the veteran Argentine chronicler Jorge Barraza, columnist from several newspapers in the region. “Both have a similar style: encouraging good football, pressing high and playing in the opponent’s half.”
Despite the disappointment of the Cup, Colombia is aiming for the next World Cup. It remains the only undefeated team in the South American qualifiers for North America 2026. The marathon round-robin CONMEBOL qualifiers, which now award more places than ever before – up to seven among ten teams, pending the play-offs – resume with a double date in September. Lorenzo’s team will visit Peru, the bottom team, and then host Argentina, the leader of the table, in Barranquilla. The Colombians have accumulated 12 points in the first six dates, only below the Staircase and Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay.
Lorenzo, a defender who played with Argentina in the 1990 World Cup final in Italy, was forged in the coaching ranks as Pékerman’s assistant. Together they led Colombia to the quarter-finals of Brazil 2014, their best performance ever, and then to the round of 16 of Russia 2018. ‘Don José’s’ CV speaks for itself. In Russia he became the coach who has led Colombia in the most World Cup matches (9), above Francisco Maturana. With his calm, unobtrusive leadership, Pékerman won over the Colombians during the six years he was in charge of the team. Lorenzo, his pupil, is following the same path.
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