The South American Qualifiers are not usually easy at all, but Russia 2018 surpassed all the levels of suspense that could be expected from them.
The end of the film for Colombia turned out to be happy, with a tight classification on the last date thanks to the tie achieved in the match against Peru.
That image of the controversial talk between Radamel Falcao and Paolo Guerrero about Chile’s defeat against Brazil is still latent in the memory, and it could not be otherwise, since that result meant the ticket to Russia for both.
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That ticket began to be paid on October 8, 2015, in the debut of the Tricolor in Barranquilla against Peru. Colombia came from getting the first classification in history to the quarterfinals of a World Cup in Brazil 2014 and was received in the best way in the Metropolitan.
Pekerman’s men managed to return all that love with a 2-0 victory thanks to goals from two players who were not called up for the World Cup: Teófilo Gutiérrez and Edwin Cardona.
However, a string of bad games would await this great start…
The Tricolor was beaten 3-0 in Uruguay, tied 1-1 with Chile and lost 1-0 at home against Argentina, thus closing 2015 with three negative results and a compromising position in the table. Seventh with 4 points.
2016 came after a tough elimination on penalties against Argentina in the Copa América played in 2015, but that was not reflected in the team’s performance: they defeated Bolivia 3-2 at the height of La Paz and won two local games, one against Ecuador and the other against Venezuela.
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Until then, the team was comfortable in third place and without major threats to their World Cup dream. But in the next matches he had to face the most difficult rivals in the qualifiers. Tough duels loomed against Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina
Colombia lost in Manaus and Buenos Aires, and only got 5 points out of the 9 remaining at stake, closing the year in sixth place and out of any possibility that would put it in Russia.
2017 brought the last 6 dates and the last chances for all the teams to fight to enter the World Cup. Each one of them was a final.
Luckily, the pressure of the first game did not work against the team, which defeated Bolivia by the minimum and managed to place itself again in fourth place with one foot in the World Cup.
In the next final, Ecuador awaited, that team that began the qualifying rounds with a great winning streak and wanted to continue fighting for classification. It was another test passed by Pekerman’s men with a 2-0 victory and the wonderful climb to second place in the table, which provided a great respite for the entire country.
On the following date, against Venezuela, a draw was rescued that was worth gold. La Tricolor maintained second place with three games remaining in the South American Qualifiers.
It remained to face Brazil and Paraguay in Barranquilla and Peru in Lima.
“I think it is the first time that we will be able to repeat the team”, said Pekerman before the duel against the Paraguayans and fueled the illusion. It is that the great obstacles of all the way to the World Cup (injuries and lack of continuity of a formation) disappeared and the victory that gave them the classification seemed more and more likely.
But the two games at home were a great disappointment for the coffee fans, who saw the trip to Russia diluted due to draws against Neymar’s and Cardozo’s teams.
The only thing left was to dream of a favorable result in Lima and wait for a Chilean defeat in Brazil.
So it was!. La Roja was thrashed by Neymar and company and Colombia got the draw against Peru that put it back in a World Cup after a movie tie.
AP