“It would be absurd to expect our beloved team to do badly in their debut” | OPINION

Turning on the television and watching Ricardo Gareca appear in a bank advertisement, a few days before the start of the Qualifiers, is almost ironic. At the end of that promotional video, the ‘Tiger’ only needed to wink and say that he, more than anyone else, knows what it is to have “good credit”. That blank check that the country signed with Gareca, after qualifying for Russia 2018, is what Juan Reynoso lacks so much at this start of the Qualifiers. He hasn’t even started to compete and Juan Máximo already knows that the time in his favor is minimal. Gareca had a credit full of prosperity and free use; Reynoso has not even asked for a loan and we already see him as delinquent.

Leading the Peruvian team to a World Cup qualification after 36 years, allowed ‘Flaco’ to take possession of a magic board to surf any possible wave. It didn’t matter that Brazil thrashed us 5-0 in the 2019 Copa América or started the 2022 Qualifiers with just one point in five games. There was also no public trial for the misconduct of Christian Cueva, nor criticism for not taking Paolo Guerrero to the playoffs against Australia. Perhaps if he had started a third process, the ‘Tiger’ armor would have been more vulnerable, as if to ask him, for example, why he insisted on such a decisive game (like the one in Doha) with a player like Sergio Peña, who had more minutes in show business programs than in sports segments.

In football, a good result is much more than an ally: it is your best friend. And Juan Reynoso starts very alone in this Qualifier. Not only does he have an Olympic hurdle (to say high is too little) to jump, but his own background causes him to surround himself with a feeling of debts to be paid. As a player he broke the hearts of the Alianza Lima fans and as a coach he took out his pockets in a final to say, in his own way, that Sporting Cristal was buying titles. His career, as leader of the 1990s Peruvian team and as a coach, has been accompanied by a forced confrontation with journalism. At the slightest slip, as in the win against Japan, the ‘Cabezón’ frown appears in front of a microphone or camera. “Nobody summoned them here,” he told reporters who waited for him at the airport in late June.

When Gareca arrived in Peru, in 2015, the closest reference is that he had done the Olympic lap with the ‘U’ in an Opening. His notebook was blank. If Reynoso wants to erase all the accumulated scribbles, he has to win or, at least, draw in these first games. add or add He sounds unfair, even a little cruel and hasty, but it is reality and any survey on social networks would prove it. Regardless of the casualties or the generational replacement, the margin of error for the bicolor coach is minimal.

And if we want to add more anticipated debts we can add the prolonged international tour of Juan Máximo. If he loses to Paraguay and Brazil, they will take the miles from his travels. In addition, unnecessarily, he has become a companion to the social photos of the questioned FPF president, Agustín Lozano. The match with Paraguay is still 0-0, however, Reynoso starts with the score against.

It would be nonsense to expect our beloved team to do badly. When Peru qualifies for the World Cups, we all win. We have an unbeatable opportunity with six and a half places for South America. There were minutes in the friendlies against Morocco and South Korea in which this new process announced possible good news. It helps more to strengthen what has been built than to tear it all down and start from scratch. Juan Máximo Reynoso is a very good club coach, to deny that is to take advantage of the antibody. It is an unnecessary journalistic revenge. What he has to show, and he has little time to do it, is that he can also be a coach for a national team.

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