Juan Reynoso, the unfriendly successor who never wanted to be Gareca and why they chose him | OPINION

In any case, the new appointee had an enviable track record as a strategist, an ideal career path, which began by directing in the provinces in Bolo, triumphing in the capital with the U and successfully internationalizing in Mexico. In fact, the explanation for his stylistic turn from player to coach was in those Aztec years where he formed his coaching ways, more given to calculation than free will. In that sense, it was more the result of Ojitos Meza and Raúl Arias than of Oblitas’ schemes. Of course, his distrustful personality all originated from his Peruvian times, where in the 90s he received criticism from a press that he did not have the authority to correct anything and looked at the German Lander type leaders as rivals who would never understand the real efforts. of the soccer player.

However, there it was Reynoso, elected and named, after Gareca. “He has matured,” they said. And he rehearsed those occasional smiles to seem like a different guy. Of course, he knew that coming after Gareca is like being the first boyfriend after a hard breakup with the ideal partner. If Chemo was the almost amateur scheme and Markarián a very autumnal strategist for his “fantastics”, Gareca was the simplicity of a coach who perhaps was not the best but was the most suitable to empathize with the national desire to progress by stepping on the ball. His trust in the Peruvian player translated into the recovery of the 10 as an identifying mark and the faith that the Cuevas and the Flores were his starters, even if they played poorly in one, two or three games. Reynoso was, however, something else. As a note in El Comercio on October 2 warned, Reynoso is a tactician who prepares each team for each match, moving players as if they were pieces of a personal chess that he controls at will. An obsessive who does not want players at less than 100% of what his meter says and who would have been able to seat the Reynoso-player if he had directed himself. “I want a chameleonic team, that knows how to use plan A, B, C and D”, he stated in Videna before a group of footballers who until that moment had “succeeded” with their simple zonal defense and their backbone of 4 or 5 players. that not even God could get them out of us.

It is very likely that under other deadlines and other haste, his could represent an evolution (or step 2) to Gareca’s methods, but the playoffs wait for no one and, judging by what has been seen in 4 dates, Reynoso not only does not find great certainties in his eleven but has disrupted the basic structures of his predecessor. Why did we hire a diametrically opposed coach to replace a classic coach? Why did we go from one who did not confront anyone to another who imagines ghosts even in the neighboring buildings of the San Luis neighborhood? Why could a coach like Reynoso result in continuity with one like Gareca? Let’s ask the president of the FPF and the general director, the intellectual authors of this mess, why they hired such a different coach if with Gareca, since 2015 to date we had not dropped below the top 5 in either the Qualifiers or the Copa América.

I’m not saying that Oblitas is in line with Lozano’s ideas in general, but I am saying that the choice of Reynoso to replace Gareca was something on which they very much agreed. They both had their “reasons” for choosing it. Lozano was looking for a successful person who would not charge him what Gareca did and who would be useful to his internal political movements. And Oblitas, Reynoso’s boss/friend since the 80s, saw his son as having grown up to take on the big tasks. Apparently, the analysis did not take into account the different methodology before a tie or the extreme distance of public profiles between a Gareca who is strategically wise in his statements and a Reynoso who, in his idea of ​​​​beating the journalists, can from throw out players to get into linguistic traps that demean it.

One is tempted to say: it’s Reynoso’s fault. And yes, but also, and above all, of those who elected him. The Reynoso-coach, responsible for a lot of things that happen, is just being the Juan that we all know. There, then, are the deluded ones who believed that he would be someone else, or that he would suddenly become the heavy blond, who hugs Cuevita and says “think.”