“Bosses”: Suarez

Fox Soccer Channel is running a serial program called “Bosses” in anticipation of the World Cup. Lately they’ve been focusing on the head coaches of the North and South American teams that will take part in the quadrennial tournament in Germany. Today I caught the episode that featured Ecuador’s man with the plan, Luis Fernando Suarez.

Suarez was being interviewed in some “pub”, in front of a board with a soccer pitch marked on it. As always, LFS was as dapper as can be. The board helpfully showed how a four-four-two formation might look, using yellow circles as players. For those of you not familiar with this exotic football set-up, an example:

X X
X X X
X X X
X X

Any clearer? Good. Suarez was his charming self, I must say, and a good sport throughout. He spoke about the challenges every coach faces upon taking over a national team, and what his philosophy would be this summer. A lot of what he said, it seemed to me, sounded like 1970s Dutch totalfootball-speak. He said that he wants La Tri to never think that they are on defense, or that they are on offense. Rather, every moment of a match presents an opportunity for the team to advance its in-game agenda. So there you go.

Despite Ecuador’s showing in its last few friendlies (1 win with 3 one-goal losses) I still have faith in LFS. If you get the Fox Soccer Channel, look for a repeat of the show in the coming weeks.