At 7:45 a.m. on June 22, two days after the Copa America kicked off, my three children and I got into the car. At the end of that day, after traveling 1,432 km, we arrived to sleep in a city called Meridian, Mississippi. At 9:30 p.m., late in the evening, we entered the reception after two stops for gas, one for lunch and five sandwiches in the car. We had left Bethesda, Maryland, and preferred to travel in daylight, because at night all cats are gray. In the downtime of this multi-day trip I began to read the biography of Carlo Ancelotti, who has just won the 15th Champions League for Real Madrid. The book is part soccer and part leadership, and the best company as we chase the Colombian national team in its first three Copa America qualifiers in Houston, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona, and Santa Clara, California.
On the second day, around 3 p.m., I looked for a place in Birmingham, Alabama, that offered food with a local flavor. Southern Cuisine, it was called; more explicit is hard to say. However, one of my sons, Gregorio, 16, asked for a Philly Cheesestakea little southern, and the others, Julieta, 13, and Gabriel, 18, who is going to college this year, and who asked for this trip as a graduation gift a year ago, shared a ribeye with macaroni and cheese, not very local. I kept my promise to eat something from the south, shrimp with grits.
Apple recently released a list of the 100 greatest albums of all time. Since we were going to face a natural tug-of-war over what music to listen to in the car, we agreed on a strategy that would make long stretches of space-time and music-road manageable: we agreed to listen to full albums, not just individual songs. So we went from Lauryn Hill (the odd #1 album on the list) to Anderson Paak (unknown to me), Michael Jackson, Frank Ocean, Adelle, Cold Play, Amy Winehouse, and Grupo Niche (this one doesn’t appear in the 100, but it should). The old and the young found a musical peace, not without some disagreements. There is no such thing as total peace.
The second day we went to New Orleans for lunch, then Houston to pick up my wife, Veronica, and on the third day, according to the Scriptures, the opening match of the Sele arrived. That is what they call coach Nestor Lorenzo’s team in a catchy song by Ryan Castro, “The Rhythm that unites us,” which in practice became the song for the Copa America. Those twenty-six boys are the object of our hopes. In Houston we met up with my brother Gonzalo, who comes from Bogota, and his son Sebastian. The combo was complete.
“This is not a job for the faint of heart,” says Carlo Ancelotti when he talks about football managers. The life cycle of a manager in a team is 30 months, due to the brutal rotation and frequent failures. He is a leader exposed every week to a stark accountability with 40 thousand people who are not sympathetic to any mistake that is made.
I think about what is coming and it gives me peace of mind to remember the Argentine coach José Pekerman, and his six years in charge of the Colombian national team (2012-2018). I allow myself the freedom to make conjectures. Pekerman was a coach and world champion with the Argentine youth teams, which is where his teaching ability comes from. He taught the Colombians something that the Argentines are masters at: coming back quickly to defend when they lose the ball, and being strong at the back. Colombia now has that. Apart from four solid defenders, the two central defenders Lucumí (later Cuesta) and Davison, and the full-backs Muñoz and Mojica, all technical and solid.
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I predict that the current coach, Néstor Lorenzo, will coach the Sele in a couple of World Cups and a couple of Copa Américas; I cross my fingers that this will be the case. The team arrived at the first official match with 23 games unbeaten. We saw it weeks before in the 5-1 against the USA. By the time of the first match with Paraguay we had already traveled 2,270 kilometers. Go Colombia!
The 2-1 win over Paraguay was comforting, although there were some tense moments after Paraguay’s goal. That is the essence of football. Having your soul hanging on every pass, every mistake and every ball that is lost. The final whistle gave us our breath back.
On the way to Phoenix, Arizona, we passed through Dallas, where my wife found out that the restaurant Yard Bird was known for having the best breaded chicken and waffles, a strange combination for a local culinary emblem. That night we made a mistake in choosing a hotel, and went to a different one from the one where we had our reservation. Once Harleystas The hotel in front of us had sold out of rooms. It was one in the morning and we had been on the road for 16 hours. My children were dozing on the sofas in the reception area and the lady who attended to us said cordially that there was no solution. We were like Joseph and Mary on Christmas Eve. I called another hotel across the street and there were beds there. The next day we found a suspicious hair in the poorly cleaned shower, which I told the manager about. She let us have one of the two rooms for free, and so we closed our connection with that hotel.
In Phoenix everything went as it should. The hotel, the meal and the match against Costa Rica. Once again the stadium was yellow and our seats were close to the grass. We sang the National Anthem at the top of our lungs, with our hands on our chests, like the players, and we enjoyed a Colombia that played, dominated, scored goals, celebrated and excited us. At the end Verónica, when the Sele was already heading towards the locker rooms, says she received a greeting from the man of the day, the forward Jhon Córdoba, who produced the penalty and then scored an anthology shot for 3-0. Gregorio made eye contact with Lucho Díaz, the great star of Colombia, and asked for his shirt, to which Lucho made a gesture that was appreciated, but, nah, maybe not, everything was very cool. Richard Rios gave the spare shirt to a fan next to him, but my son was not so lucky.
At the hotel I watched three match summaries on my cell phone. That resounding victory paid off all our efforts. We went to a beer hall to celebrate and watch the Brazil-Paraguay match. There were several tables of Colombians, and at one was Ángel Custodio Cabrera with his family, former Millonarios number 9, a profession he left due to an injury, former congressman for La U, former labor minister and great guy.
By the time we reached Los Angeles, we had completed 4,470 kilometers of highway in a drive of approximately 47 hours, with many stops to fill up with gas, buy bottles of very cold water, gummy bears, sugary sour worms, pork rinds, jars of Arizona iced tea for my children, an untold number of songs and, on the back benches of the car, many movies on cell phones. There the Posadas joined the combo, a family that lives in California. There we were three cars in the direction of Santa Clara.
Ancelotti says: “Everyone has the will to win, but only the best have the will to prepare to win.”
The expectation for the match against Brazil was enormous, full of desire and respect. Although the current team has more cracks than cohesion, and has not yet managed to be the scratch of the jogo bonito of yesteryear, they are Brazil and they crushed a dignified and fast-paced Paraguay. Colombia had to be enough, as it was in Barranquilla months ago, when we defeated them 2-1, the first time in a qualifying round, with two goals from Luis Díaz. We reviewed the video of that match to fill ourselves with hope. If we could beat them, it was not far-fetched to remain undefeated and move on to the top of the group; or even win.
“You have to score two goals against Brazil to make it worth one against Colombia,” Gregorio declared once the match had ended with a 1-1 draw. The most notable thing in the stands happened with a proud Brazilian who was close to us. In front of Raphina’s goal, an impeccable free kick from the left corner, which goalkeeper Vargas was unable to deflect, in a stretch that stayed with us. In front of the silence that fell on the Colombian fans, the Brazilian chose to arrogantly show the five stars of the five-time champion that he wore on his chest and proudly spread the five fingers of his other hand. We swallowed the insult. But he had to swallow an avalanche of accusatory hands and shouts for Davinson Sánchez’s header. What shouting and thirst for revenge took hold of those who were next to him. The goal was disallowed.
We endured the defeat for many more minutes, until before the end of the first half, when Daniel Muñoz made the net that goalkeeper Alisson was defending stand firm. We shouted, hugged, splashed water, bumped fists with strangers, kissed his wife and were endearing for a wonderful minute. Once again in our stands, they overwhelmed the five-star player. Shortly after, he left and never returned.
Ancelotti says that when appointing a leader you have to ask why he is being brought into the team: whether to maintain a culture or to create a new one. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” he writes. Without the right culture, the team does not work. Coach Lorenzo, I imagine, was brought in to revive and maintain a culture of technical play, mystique and good physical preparation that dates back to Pacho Maturana, and which reached a higher level under Pekerman.
There, in the strenuous second half and the last five minutes of terror against Brazil, the first leg of our trip to accompany the Colombian National Team ended. Some stars hold the bench and others run, pass with scientific precision and pass with art, attack and strike, or defend like cats upside down. What joy these fourteen days of road and expectations have given us. What indelible memories those 9,619 kilometers of football gave us.
On the way back, we crossed the United States from west to east, right through the middle of the country, and we continued watching Copa America and Euro Cup matches on our cellphones. The best roadside advertisement we saw was in Nebraska: “Prison area, hitchhiking pick-ups prohibited.”
Back home, we watched the match against Uruguay on television. The Uruguayans consider that Colombia has become their executioner, since the 2-0 at the Maracaná in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. With tremendous suffering, we repeated the feat on this occasion, with the 1-0 defended by ten titans, and the intelligence of the coaching staff with the substitutions.
This is the first time we have made such a long trip following football, and we are already starting to think about the 2026 World Cup, when we will hopefully regain peace in Colombia and keep hope in the Sele and the future. Let’s go Colombia for this Copa América 2024!
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