The wait is over and the Colombian team officially debuted in the 2024 Copa América. Those led by Néstor Lorenzo defeated Paraguay 2-1, thus adding their first three points and becoming the only leaders of Group D after the draw between Brazil and Costa Rica 0-0.
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The victory left a good feeling for both the press and the spectators who saw a complicated game that ended up being resolved by air and by prodigious left foot from James Rodríguez who assisted Daniel Muñoz and Jefferson Lerma on two occasions.
Meanwhile, the Paraguayan press has reacted to Colombia’s victory or, rather, to the defeat of the Guaraní. Different media have highlighted the attitude of those led by Daniel Garnero, but have emphasized the mistakes that cost them the defeat in their debut.
In ABC They titled: “Paraguay, imprecise, without improvement and defeat against Colombia”, highlighting the lack of clarity of the Guaranís and the offensive aggressiveness of Colombia that allowed them to score 2 goals in less than 15 minutes. In the portal Versus They referred to the Tricolor goals that came through two headers: “Incredible but true: Paraguay suffers again in the aerial game”.
In the middle D10 They praised the quality of James Rodríguez to center the two goals and pointed out their concern when seeing a Paraguayan team that historically was one of the best in the aerial game, but that on this occasion was inferior “Paraguay debuts with defeat in the Copa América”.
In the midst of the press reactions, Paraguay’s coach, Daniel Garnero, referred to the defeat suffered against Colombia, highlighting the attitude shown on the field that almost allowed them to tie.
“I liked that we competed at the level of a Colombian team at an excellent level, together with Argentina they are the ones that reached this Copa América being superior to the others. I liked that we reacted, that we scored a goal and continued looking for the possibility of tying the game. There were many positive things”.
Although Paraguay proved to be brave and complicated the Tricolor, even trying to tie the score, those led by Daniel Garnero wasted the opportunity to add their first points and now they will have to win against Costa Rica and Brazil if they want to advance to the quarterfinals of the Cup America.
For his part, the teacher Néstor Lorenzo referred to the victory which he described as fairbut he dedicated a few words to question the state of the grass at the NGR stadium, which complicated the process of the game in points.
“The players told us that the ball did not run and sometimes the ball bounced in some spaces on the court, the issue of the grass panels that raised them and the synthetic is still below. The difficulty was when at the start or in short associations we lost the ball and they went long and cut lines and made it difficult for us by gaining the back of the full-backs who played high. Paraguay played a great game, we are not surprised because we know it and we deserved the victory.”
Although Néstor Lorenzo was not the only one to criticize the state of the grass, James Rodríguez, who was chosen as the best player of the match, pointed out to the media that the field had some strange characteristics that complicated the game: “The court wasn’t helping much. It’s dry, they put a strange rug. The conditions of the field are not very good (…) The state of the field affected us a lot, but we knew that we had to win no matter what.”
Colombia has not been the only team to complain about the state of the field in the Copa América 2024 stadiums. Since the opening match, different players and coaches have expressed their observations on the matter. Even Figures such as Emiliano ‘El Dibu’ Martínez have pointed out that the state of the field is a differentiating factor between the Euro Cup and the oldest national team tournament.
