The Argentine Ricardo Gareca left the position of Peru soccer coach that he held for seven years after rejecting an offer to renew his contract that included a notorious salary reduction, local media reported this Thursday.
Although the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF) has not issued a statement, the manager of the Peruvian national teams, Antonio García Pye, said goodbye to the coach on his social networks. “Thank you teacher… for so much,” Garcia Pye posted on Instagram, along with a photo of him with Gareca and Peru’s sporting director, Juan Carlos Oblitas.
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Who would be Gareca’s replacement in Peru
Local media announced in recent days, given the insistent rumors about the departure of the former soccer player, that the candidates to succeed him as driver of the Blanquirroja are his compatriot Sebastián Beccacece and the Peruvian Juan Reynoso.
The video analyst of the Peruvian team, Cedric Oropesa, wrote that he only has “words of thanks for everything” he did at the head of the team led by Gareca. “Only thank you for so much. Nobody takes away what we danced,” he pointed out.
The newspaper El Comercio published that sources from the FPF confirmed that Gareca “is leaving Peru and will not continue to be the technical director of the Peruvian team.” after the negotiations for an eventual renewal were put to an end.
If the information is confirmed, “el Tigre” will stop directing the Blanquirroja after seven years of a process that led Peru back to a World Cup after 36 years, in Russia 2018, and after having lost a second consecutive classification, for Qatar 2022, in the playoff against Australia, last June.
The reason why Gareca did not renew with Peru
After the end of that meeting, the Argentine ceased to be Peru’s coach and a week ago he traveled back to his country, to where the leaders of the FPF, headed by its president, Agustín Lozano, went to try to get him to lead a third process at the head of the Inca team.
Local media pointed out, however, that this offer included a notorious salary reductionwhich in the campaign to Qatar reached 3.7 million dollars a year, and now it was proposed to be 2.2 million dollars a year.
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Both Lozano and Oblitas have pointed out in recent weeks that the FPF did not have a “plan B”, since their intention was to achieve the “yes or yes” renewal of Gareca.
‘El Tigre’, who previously managed the Universitario de Deportes in Peru, reached the national team in 2015 and managed it in 96 games, with a balance of 41 wins, 19 draws and 36 losses, the last of them on the 13th of June, on penalties, which ended the Peruvian aspirations to go to Qatar 2022.
Gareca had an important career as a player at América de Cali, with whom he won three titles and reached three Copa Libertadores finals. He was coach of the same team and also of Santa Fe.
Press versions put Gareca in the orbit of the Colombian National Team after the departure of Reinaldo Rueda, but his environment denied it. The Colombian Football Federation finally chose his compatriot Néstor Lorenzo.
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