Costa Rica’s DT on accessing his third World Cup: “Today’s football is for intelligent people”

Current football is for “intelligent” and the coach who says that he only thinks about attacking is a “populist”, assured the DT for the AFP agency Costa Rica, Luis Fernando Suarezwho will face his third World Cup in Qatar 2022.

“Football is always the same, it is a game of space and time, before there was more space and more time, today there is very little space and very little time, you have to think much faster, today’s football is for intelligent people” , specified for the agency in question.

The coffee strategist qualified Costa Rica for its sixth World Cup with a pragmatic game, with few scoring opportunities, based on defensive security and backed by his star piece, goalkeeper Keylor Navas.

“The coach who says that he only thinks about attack and that he does not think about defense seems very populist to me, it seems irresponsible to me, I think that both things have to be done well,” says Suárez, whose selection was the last of the 32 classified to the World Cup, defeating New Zealand 1-0 in Doha in the playoffs.

For this reason, he prefers not to opt for the style of the Spanish coach of Manchester City, Josep Guardiola, focused on possession of the ball and attack, nor for his antagonist, the coach of Atlético de Madrid, the Argentine Diego Pablo Simeone, focused on defense and kickback.

“When you succeed easily, you can enroll with one or the other”, but “in the football there are two phases and in both phases you have to work one hundred percent on the defensive side and one hundred percent on the offensive side”, he says.