🇨🇱 Chile manager Gareca wants to see Peru players he loves miserable (temporarily)
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Reporting from Arlington, Texas
Life without Ricardo Gareca isn’t going well.
It’s fair to say for Peru, which parted ways with the manager after losing the playoff to get to the 2022 World Cup. It was fair to say about Chile, which won only one match in 2023 - a World Cup qualifier against Peru.
Then, “El Tigre” arrived.
Despite a long tenure having worked in Argentine clubs, including Velez Sarsfield, his return to Velez didn’t hit the same either. Gareca seems like “an international manager” now, a man able to get the most out of a group in a short time, someone able to cut through the fluff to select a country’s best players and give that country the best chance to win at a tournament like the Copa América.
He took over Chile in January, led La Roja to a win over Albania and a well-played loss to France in March friendly matches and, after a 3-0 Copa América send-off victory over Paraguay, has fans believing the team has turned the corner.
“Honestly, everything we see, we like, whether the professionalism, the attention, the time together, what they offer on the field. I think there’s a lot of potential,” Gareca said in his news conference here Thursday.