Alfaro (Ecuador): “They can beat us as a team, but nobody can beat us as a group”

The Ecuador coachthe Argentinian Gustavo Alfaroconfirmed that it was Saturday looks like an underdog in the opening match of the 2022 World Cup that this Sunday is their match Qatarwhile rekindling his team’s hopes of doing something big in that competition.

“For me, being in a World Cup with these people is already successful. The illusion is hard to quantify, but we have a very big illusion,” said the coach of Tri, who highlighted the youth of his team, but also his quality.

Immediate replacement for the resigned Jordi Cruyff, Alfaro admits his team has gone through a “difficult situation”but he indicated that they did so “without victimizing themselves” and that, he said, lay his strength, in “fighting for the causes he believed to be just and in being the protagonist of his story.”

One of those pitfalls is the absence of Byron Castilloafter being sanctioned by Ecuador for its improper alignment, a loss that destroyed the morale of the group but the technician works to be another incentive.

“They should have seen Byron’s pain when he knew his absence, the team’s pain and the team’s love for Byron. Byron is a flag, another reason to give everything. Tomorrow we will have him on the pitch, ” said the coach. who thus aims to raise the motivation of his team.

Weapons that they will also brand against the hostess, who they recognize that despite the fact that they are weaker on paper, they have virtues that can cause them problems.

“The favoritism of Qatar is that He has been preparing for this fight for more than twelve years. Now that they’ve worked out the details, it’s a very good choice. It doesn’t have players in the big European leagues, but it’s a well-prepared and well-prepared team that can make it difficult for anyone,” he said.

“If you add scoring ability to that, you’re ready to fight for important things. He became an Asian champion, he’s not a protagonist who comes because he’s a world champion. They worked as an academy, as a school, with a state policy of what the football”, he added.

The Argentine coach, who said he was the heir to all his compatriots’ leading rivalries in previous World Cups, considered it “a privilege” to open the world and made sure he remembered “lettuce” Alfaro that when he was five or six years old he fell into soccer”.

He introduced himself as a representative of “coaches who come from the bottom and sacrifice a lot to make room for themselves.”

But framed the presence of Ecuador in the World Cup as a process of improving football in that country, because his goals as a coach are “to honor the player and the coach”.

In this sense, he emphasized the steps forward made by Ecuadorian soccer in recent years, with more and more players in the big leagues, and predicted that “at the next World Cup it will have 25 or 30 players in Europe,” resulting in increased quality.

In this World Cup they have three players from Brihton, Jeremy Sarmiento, Moises Caicedo Y Pervis Estupinánthat there is already a conspiracy which they seek to place in the service of choice.