the man behind Peru’s change in fortunes
It was the late Real Madrid great Alfredo Di Stefano who once said “we played better than ever and lost as usual” and it is a feeling that Peruvian supporters have known all too well.
The Andean nation, set for a first World Cup appearance for 36 years, has always produced talented players. However, the national team have exasperated their followers for three decades, buckling at the first sign of trouble and often imploding completely.
Repeated failure to qualify for the World Cup created a vicious circle with more pressure on the team and a sensationalist media adding to the tension with reports of players partying before games. At one point, they went 12 years without winning a qualifier away from home.
But the last three years have seen an extraordinary turnaround under Argentine coach Ricardo Gareca.
The 60-year-old, who still sports the same shoulder-length hair as he did during his playing days, has brought calm and serenity to a previously hysterical environment and turned the players into national heroes.
When Peru played Saudi Arabia in the small Swiss town of St Gallen last Sunday, fans travelled from all over Europe to watch them, filling the Kybunpark
stadium to its 18,000 capacity and turning it into a sea of red and white. Remarkably, Peruvians have been the seventh biggest foreign-based buyers of World Cup tickets, ahead of England, France and Spain.
A combination of improved training methods, psychology and return to Peruvian football’s roots are behind the revival. Peru’s fitness coach Nestor Bonillo, who has been one of Gareca’s closest assistants for much of his career, remembered the time they first worked in Peru with the Lima club Universitario in 2007.
Apart from a poorly maintained infrastructure, he noted that the players only behaved as professionals when they were on the pitch.
“There wasn’t any real consciousness of nutrition, resting, hydration... of having the profession in their heads 24 hours a day,” he said at the team’s hotel at the Alpine resort of Schruns, where they are preparing for Russia.
When Gareca and his staff took over the national team in 2015, Bonillo said they had very little information to go on. “We started to put together a database on the players... how many metres the players ran, the intensity, we compared what happened when there was a shorter interval between matches, or we played a different altitudes,” he said. “That allowed us to take decisions we couldn’t take earlier when we didn’t have this.”
Sometimes it was the small details which counted.
Peru are unbeaten in their last 14 games and their 3-1 win over Croatia in March was their first against European opposition for 19 years - a crucial psychological blow as they face Denmark, France and Australia in Group C. Most importantly, Bonillo said, Gareca understood Peru’s football heritage.
“He respected the essence of Peruvian football,” said Bonillo, remembering players from the golden era of the 1970s such as Teofilo Cubillas, Julio Cesar Uribe and Cesar Cueto.
“That comes from past generations, it’s about playing good football, treating the ball well, the joy of playing and their ability to play their way out of tight corners.”