Yeah I was just hearing way too many old familiar names during the match. Now I'm curious to know how many go back to the Bielsa days
@Jmare007 you got Bischoff and Hogan running the national team.
Bielsa started in 2007 and had a couple of months with a mix of old guard players (like
Salas) and run of the mill average players from that time. But the reason -besides the money- he took the job was because we had two very promising generations of U-20 players from 2005 and 2007.
After the first 4 games of the WCQ Bielsa got 8 months to actually prepare the kids he actually wanted to manage from those U-20 teams and from there the core of this "golden generation" of Chile national team came about.
Bravo (2003), Medel, Isla,Vidal, Alexis (2007) were the ones that stuck because we were never able to come close to having some one else play instead of them at the level required. Then you had guys like Mati Fernández (2005), Marcelo Díaz (2005) and a the only two guys that were able to keep the role that were younger: Aranguiz and Vargas, both from the 2009 U-20 national team. Guys like Bousejour and Valdivia who were from the 2003 generation that never had real competitive national U-20 team (like Bravo) also lasted way longer than they should've had but we honestly never had better alternatives to replace them.
We fukked up wasting the 2013 U-20 team. That one that a lot of player that could've been legit pieces for the 2018 and 2022 WCQ but they ended up getting lost in the shuffle for one reason or another.
To be honest though, the most frustrating part is that this team should've qualified for 2018 but they chocked miserably in 2 of the last 4 games of the qualifier (home vs Paraguay and away in La Paz against two awful fukking teams) and this year it had a legit chance because the quality of teams is fukking abysmal in Conmebol besides Brasil and Argentina. Like, we played like shyt all WCQ and still could be in if the refs don't fukk us in Montevideo or we don't choke against Bolivia at home (or Venezuela in Caracas)
. It just speaks how important it is to have a manager that's worth a damn. When capable managers don't wanna take your team and you have to stick with whoever you can get, then nothing good can come out of it.