Click here to play the Polla 2006 for the World Cup.

INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO PLAY LA POLLA… ONLY $10 AND LOTS OF FUN!

- Papito, vas a jugar la polla?

- Si vendo otros 10 libros, me juego la polla!

- Ala! será que me alcanza esta quincena para jugar la polla?

Estoy emputado que el Atlético Nacional haya perdido por goleada anoche. Es que de unos años para acá, cualquiera golea a Nacional: San Lorenzo en la final de la sudamericana, Cienciano en cuartos de final y América de México en octavos. Tolima en la copa mustang 2006 y anoche Liga Deportiva Universitaria de Quito por la libertadores. Sabía que los ecuatorianos tenían un buen equipo y antes del partido le dije a un amigo que me contentaba con perder 1-0. Al final fueron 4 los que nos empacaron, y ya con ese resultado las esperanzas de pasar a cuartos de final se desvanecen. Al equipo le pido que tengan verguenza deportiva y este martes hagan respetar el Atanasio. No pido milagros, solo ganen. Pongan huevos porque con taquitos y florituras no se ganan partidos.

Reuters: The players celebrating Easter-style

Last night Atlético Nacional beated Rosario Central 2-1 playing in Argentina and classified to the 3rd round of Copa Libertadores being the best of its group. The goals for Nacional were scored by Victor Hugo Aristizabal and Vladimir Marín. Fox Sports didn’t broadcasted the game and broadcasted Palmeiras vs Cerro Porteño (2-3) instead, so I tried to watch it on NuestroFutbol, but the connection was very poor. Finally I listened to the game on Caracol Radio.
I watched the game with my friend Camilo who is fan of Independiente Santa Fé, also classified to the 3rd round.

Last international competition that Atlético Nacional played was last years Sudamericana cup. The team lost pretty badly agains América (México) and after that the team played a horrible season in the Colombian league. Because of that, they fired the manager Santiago Escobar and the argentinian midfielder Hugo Morales. The team now looks much solid, but I’m still not happy with some players who sometimes give pretty bad performances, specially in defense. Anyway, I hope this time Atlético Nacional can play a very good tournament and who knows, maybe we can win the cup again like in 1989!

For the second time in a row, Colombia has failed to qualify to the World Cup. In the last round Colombia beat Paraguay 1-0, but Uruguay won their game against Argentina 1-0 as well.

At the end Uruguay made 25 points and Colombia 24.

It is very sad that a very talented generation of Colombian soccer players will never go to a World Cup, because in 4 years they are going to be too old for it. They are Mario Alberto Yepes, Ivan Ramiro Córdoba, Juan Pablo Angel and Miguel Calero.

Luis Amaranto Perea is the only one that is still young enough, and has lots of talent to remain in the team.

The rest are mediocre players with lack of talent and gutts.

For the future I would suggest:

1. Hire a foreign coach.

Every time a Colombian coach is elected, someone is unhappy. They start talking about how a coach likes players from some regions better than others. Colombian coaches tend to use players that use to play for teams they coach in the past. I think it is logical that you use players that you know well enough, but coaches that do this fail to use other players that they might not know that well, but that maybe are in better shape. A foreign coach won’t know players that well, won’t prefer players from a particular region, won’t feel bad about not using a player that used to be very talented but that is going through a bad period. A foreign coach will make colder decisions, thinking with his head and not his heart.

2. Start with a base of young players

Colombia needs to start using a base of young players in every tournament they get chance to play. It doesn’t matter if Colombia sends an inexperienced team to the next Copa America (2007) and if they don’t do very well. The important thing is to build a good team for the next World Cup qualifiers. I would even consider keeping a couple of experienced players, as a role model for the young ones.

Colombia has done very well in recent tournaments for young players. We need to start using those players to build the national team.

3. Barranquilla is not “la casa de la selección” anymore

Only 25.000 people went to see the game Colombia vs Chile. That is pathetic. The national team needs to play in cities where you can get 50.000 people supporting the team. I think only Bogotá, Medellín or Cali are up for the challenge. They said that Barranquilla’s hot weather is an advantage for us. I think it is only an advantage for players that are use to play in the heat. But 90% of the national team is not used to this weather, so what’s the point?

Why instead of playing under difficult conditions of weather (Barranquilla) or altitude (Bogotá), not play under pleasant conditions like in Medellín?

4. Learn from other teams

Ecuador is going to its second World Cup in a row. They have talented players but I still think that Colombian players are better. However Ecuatorian players truly “sweat their jersey”. They put their hearts and souls in the soccer field. They play like warriors.

Just like Panama did in the last Gold Cup when they beat Colombia two times.

5. Desperate measures

Well, if none of the above work, we can always let Panama conquest back Colombia. That way we’ll make part of CONCACAF… although I’m not even sure if we could qualify playing there!

Or we could reunite “Gran Colombia” (Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia).

Just a little bit of humor in this sad day for Colombian soccer fans.

Any comments?

Things didn’t improved for us much this saturday since Colombia and Chile tied 1-1 and Uruguay and Ecuador tied 0-0. These results leave Uruguay in 5th position with 22 points and Colombia and Chile with 21.

This wednesday is the last chance. The games are going to be:
Paraguay vs Colombia
Chile vs Ecuador
Uruguay vs Argentina

Colombia can still qualify if:

1. Colombia wins and Uruguay ties. It doesn’t matter if Chile also wins, unless they can improve their goal difference by 12 or more goals.
2. Colombia ties, Uruguay looses and Chile ties.

Things look very difficult, but I guess we can keep the hope alive.

We couldn’t beat Chile on saturday and that pretty much eliminated us from the World Cup…

See you in South Africa in 2010!

This weekend the south american qualifiers for the World Cup Germany 2006 are going to be pretty much defined. Argentina (31 points) and Brasil (30) are already qualified. Ecuador (26) and Paraguay (25) are almost there.

And then the real battle is between Uruguay (21 points, -6 goal difference), Colombia (20 p, +7 gd) and Chile (20p, -4 gd).

The good thing is that Colombia is playing Chile this saturday in Barranquilla at 4:00 pm. The last 2 games that Colombia has played locally have been awesome (3-0 Ecuador and 5-0 Peru). Both teams are direct rivals and if there is a loosing team in this match, it can say ‘bye’ to the World Cup. A tie will be terrible for both teams. The chileans have been training all this week in Barranquilla and they have been complaining a lot about the heat (around 35oC).

At the same time Ecuador and Uruguay will be playing in Quito. Ecuador will be motivated to win and ensure its qualification. Besides they are the local team and the coach is the colombian Luis Fernando Suarez, so I believe that Ecuador will play hard to win the game. But Uruguay is also motivated to win and they will play very hard too. This game is going to be very exciting as well.

And then on Wednesday, the last matches for the qualifiers will be played.

The games that matter will be:

Paraguay vs Colombia
Chile vs Ecuador
Uruguay vs Argentina

I’m sure that Ecuador and Paraguay will be already qualified for the last game (and of course Argentina) so I’m assuming that none of those three teams will be playing very hard. This situation has me very worried: four years ago, the calendar for the qualifiers was exactly like this one. And the team’s situation was almost the same: Argentina, Brasil, Ecuador and Paraguay already qualified with Uruguay and Colombia fighting for the 5th position to play against Australia.

To qualify Colombia had to beat Paraguay 5-0 and hope for Uruguay to loose. Everyone thought impossible for Colombia to achieve that result but people agreed that Argentina could easily beat Uruguay since they had a very strong team. Magically Colombia did managed to beat Paraguay 4-0. I do believe that the result sounds very weird. I didn’t watched this game, so I cannot give you my opinion. But I never heard anyone implying that Colombia bought that game, or that Paraguay let us win. Conmebol even had european referees for these two matches to ensure fair play. The ugly part is that the Argentineans found out about the score in Paraguay and decided that they liked their ‘brothers’ from ‘El Rio de la Plata’ better than the Colombians, and they didn’t played hard against the Uruguayans. At the end that game finished 1-1 and Uruguay got to play Australia. Also this game was delayed about 10 minutes, so it gave a small advantage to the Uruguayans. The Argentineans during press releases admitted that they didn’t played hard against Uruguay to let them qualify…

I definitely don’t want to go through this situation again. I hope that Colombia beats Chile and Ecuador beats Uruguay and then in the last game, everyone should tie to keep things fair.

Un primer tiempo donde Nacional jugó bien y ganaba 1-0 con gol del brasileño Ramos. Un segundo tiempo donde el América hizo buenos cambios y fue brillante marcando 4 goles. Una estupenda noche para el brasileño Clever que marcó 3 goles, tuvo dos tiros en el palo y un mano a mano con Saldarriaga.

Al final un marcador 4-1 para un global 7-4 a favor del América.

No resultaron los cambios del Sachi al hacer al equipo más ofensivo. La otra opción hubiera sido echar el equipo atrás y meter jugadores de marca como el Chicho. Pero con la noche que tuvieron los delanteros del América, tal vez no hubiera hecho diferencia.

Al final ganó el América meritoriamente y los felicito por la victoria.

Duelen mucho los juegos por copa sudamericana que ha perdido Nacional en el Atanasio: la final con San Lorenzo, la semi final con Cienciano y ahora con América. Pero así es el fútbol, y así es la vida…

Estoy muy triste por la derrota, pero ya no hay tiempo de llorar, como decía un profesor mio del colegio.

Queda el torneo local donde podemos ser bi-campeones y queda la participación en copa libertadores 2006.

Nacional, te quiero y te sigo donde estés. Primeros o últimos, para mi eres grande.

Bueno, vamos calentando los ánimos para el juego de mañana: el partido se juega a las 8:45pm hora colombiana en el estadio Atanasio Girardot de Medellín. La boletería ya está agotada (50.000 entradas) y el América ya está en Medellín en el Hotel Intercontinental.

En Nacional hay una baja importante y es el lateral Gerardo Bedoya que fue convocado por Rueda para jugar con la selección Colombia contrá Chile este sábado (4pm). Por su parte el América también fue afectado por el mismo partido de eliminatorias sudamericanas al mundial, pues los chilenos Navia y Rojas convocados por Acosta no harán parte de la nómina. Una lástima pues la pareja Bedoya-Rojas fue encargada de abrir el marcador en el juego de ida cuando un centro de Bedoya fue cabezeado por Rojas y se convirtió en autogol.

Al América de México le ha ido bien enfrentanodo a equipos colombianos en los últimos 5 años:

En la copa libertadores del 2000, le ganaron al América de Cali en octavos de final 2-1 en México y 3-2 en Colombia. Cuauhtémoc Blanco anotó 1 gol en el primer juego y los 3 goles del segundo en una noche brillante de las águilas y nefasta para la eterna virreina*.

El la copa libertadores del 2002, enfrentaron al Tuluá (equipo que participaba por primera vez en la copa y que ahora se encuentra en la segunda división del fútbol colombiano) en la primera ronda ganándole 2-0 en Colombia y 3-2 en México.

Por su parte Nacional ha participado ya en dos ediciones de la copa sudamericana, siendo finalista en el 2002 y semi finalista en el 2003.

Todo está servido para que este miércoles se de un excelente juego en Medellín. Esperemos que el Rey de Copas haga respetar la plaza y haga valer su localía.

* El América de Cali se ha ganado el sobre nombre de “eterna virreina” pues ha llegado 3 veces a las finales de la copa libetadores y nunca ha podido ganarla. Atlético Nacional en cambio ganó la copa libertadores de 1989 y fué finalista en 1995.

“América, la copa: se mira y no se toca!”