Fernando Saucedo of Bolivia celebrates a goal against Colombia, in the qualifying rounds for Qatar 2022. Juan Karita POOL / EFE
The Bolivian team that visits Lionel Messi's Argentina this Thursday will do so as a team that, every time it leaves its country, plays under a rain cloud. After losing 4-2 to Uruguay in Montevideo this Sunday, the Bolivians carry a punishment that seems to have no expiration date: they have not won for 59 games. Bolivia has the worst run of any away team in World Cup qualifying history. At least the last victory was in a big way, with a 7-1 win over Venezuela in Puerto Ordaz 28 years ago, on July 18, 1993, when misfortune began to haunt Bolivia in every presentation outside of La Paz.
“That we continue to be the heroes of that 7-1 makes us very sad, saddens us.
Hopefully another group will come out that represents us in the best way, ”replies former defender Miguel Rimba, one of the headlines in that victory more than 10,000 days ago that opened the way to the journey through a South American desert.
“That 7-1 was an exception, something memorable, but within a great generation of footballers.
In those qualifying rounds we got the pass to the World Cup in the United States and Bolivian football became better known.
We had a base of great players, but later mistakes were made ”, adds Luis Cristaldo, scorer of a goal in the third and still the last Bolivian victory away from home in a qualifying tournament for the World Cups.
More information
World sperpento: Brazil-Argentina is suspended due to the sanitary protocol
Argentina rediscovers the joy of football
The 59 games that Bolivia has been without victories, with 50 defeats and nine draws - always in away matches for World Cup qualifiers - imply a world record. In Europe, Luxembourg reached 53. From the beginning of its journey, in 1937, the seventh smallest state in the world accumulated 52 defeats and a draw (1-1 against Belgium in Brussels, in 1989) until in 2008 it finally won outside their country, 2-1 against Switzerland in Zurich. San Marino, a mountainous microstate surrounded by central Italy, began participating in the playoffs in 1992 and has yet to win outside its country. If this Wednesday it does not triumph in Tirana, the capital of Albania, on the way to Qatar 2022, the San Marino team will add its 36th presentation without visitor joys, with 35 defeats and a solitary draw in 2001, against Latvia in Riga.And if all its away matches, the friendlies, qualifying for the Eurocup and the European League of Nations are also counted, San Marino will reach 87 starts without winning at home.
Bolivia's misadventure began at its best in history, in its only qualification for a World Cup through the qualifiers (it had already played the 1930 and 1950 World Cups, but without going through previous phases). At 53, Rimba rebuilds from La Paz that final win on the banks of the Orinoco River: “We were a team that mixed a litter that was in the last stages of its career with another that was just emerging, plus a coaching staff [led by the Spanish Xabier Azkargorta] that he chose very well. That match against Venezuela was the first of the '93 qualifiers, but we were prepared with a 53-day tour of Europe. We also had many meetings between the players: we were convinced that it was our opportunity ”, says who, after his retirement, was Minister of Sports of the Government of Evo Morales between 2010 and 2014.
“Already in the qualifying rounds for Italy 90 we had done well, and we finished with the same points as Uruguay, but we were left out by one goal difference [actually there were four]. In that tournament, in 1989, we beat Peru 2-1 in Lima, "adds Cristaldo, from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, referring to Bolivia's second away win in qualifying games, after the inaugural 3-1 over Venezuela. in 1977, in Caracas. “For the United States 94 we arrived very well: almost all the players already had international experience in the national team and clubs, such as Copa América and Libertadores. We were hardened, they were parties that did not surpass us ”, adds the one born in Ibarreta, a town in Formosa, in northwestern Argentina.but he has been a Bolivian national since at the age of 15 he went to visit his sister in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and began to play for the Tahuichi Aguilera academy.
Although he added 80 presentations for the Bolivian national team, three of them in the 1994 World Cup in the United States, Rimba reconstructs that victory in Puerto Ordaz with the precision of a surgeon. “We got to the game in Venezuela so well that, even though we started losing 1-0 in the 28th minute, we applied our motto to stay the same and ended up winning 3-1 in the first half. We had concentration, control of the ball and security, ”says Rimba, current Secretary of Tourism and Sports of El Alto, on the outskirts of the capital, La Paz. Cristaldo adds: “Later we found out that when we started losing 1-0, in our country many people turned off the TV. The journalists said 'another failure'. We scored the seventh goal with 25 minutes to go. We could have won for more. "
Why the Bolivian team lost competitiveness since then is the question that a whole country is asking, also Rimba and Cristaldo. “Here there were two very important soccer schools, the Tahuichi Aguilera in Santa Cruz de la Sierra and the Enrique Happ in Cochabamba, which fed very good national soccer players. Greats came from there, like (Marco) Etcheverry, (Julio César) Baldivieso, (Juan Manuel) Peña and (Marco) Sandy. We need to work in minor divisions and regain the level of the internal championship: now it is very low level, ”says Rimba. “Having reached the 1994 World Cup had a negative effect. That leadership was good, but later other people came. The only thing redeemable since then was second place in the 97 Copa América, at home. When you think you've reached the bottom, there's always something lower.We don't even win like before in La Paz ”.
Just as the curse of Bolivia for qualifying rounds stands out in South America -Venezuela reached 32 excursions without victories at home between 1965 and 2001 and Ecuador to 29 between 1956 and 2000-, the contrast between the national team itself as a visitor and home is also notable: in La Paz's Hernando Siles stadium, 3,577 meters above sea level, tends to get strong. For Rimba, however, that Bolivia goes down to the plains, as this Thursday in Buenos Aires, should not be such a marked impediment to victory, at least for so long.
"When I played in Bolívar (one of the big clubs in the Bolivian capital), and we went down to cities like Santa Cruz, we also got good results," says Rimba, the ninth player with the most games in the Bolivian national team. Our ankles and feet swelled a bit because we were drinking more fluid, but it affected us a little bit, not much: ultimately we had more red blood cells and we ran more. I understand that, for those of us who live in the heights, going to the plain hurts a bit, but out of 10 points, one yields eight. In the reverse case, I will not deny that the height exists, but the performance drops to a seven, a six. Teams that arrive well prepared get very good results. Now a 60 percent team is coming and they can win ”.
Back to that 94 classification, Cristaldo remembers how the feat was accomplished. “After 7-1 we had four home games, in La Paz, and we won them all, to Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador and Venezuela. In the end we had to close as a visitor. We lost to Brazil, they robbed us in Uruguay and we qualified with a draw in Ecuador. We left out the Uruguayans! ”, Says the second player with the most presence in the history of the national team. “To Brazil, in La Paz, we took him undefeated in qualifying rounds, he had not lost in 40 years. And there the president of FIFA, who was Brazilian, João Havelange, began to search with the issue of height. We have the right to play where we were born, just as Brazil made us play in Recife with 48 degrees ”, adds Rimba.
Ninth out of ten participants on the road to Qatar 2022, and of course without visitor victories (they lost with Brazil and Uruguay, and tied with Paraguay and Chile), the current version of Bolivia does not seduce. “Let's stop lying to people, the Bolivian people are not stupid, let's not say that mathematically we have a chance to go to the World Cup. The level of our team is what it showed, and that is not enough ”, says Rimba. After its terrible run away from home, Bolivia does not become competitive as a neutral in the Copa América either: it lost the ten consecutive games it played in the last three editions: 2017, 2019 and 2021.
The opportunity in which Bolivia was closest to breaking its current streak, of 59 games without away victories, was in 2011 at the Monumental in Buenos Aires, the venue for this Thursday's game. After taking the lead with a goal from Martins, a regular Albiceleste executioner - and also a starter in what will be the return of the public to Argentine football after the pandemic - Messi's team drew 1-1 in the second half.
The breakdown of the 59 games since that July 18, 1993 is divided into 50 defeats and nine draws.
The eight visits to Uruguay and the six to Colombia ended in drops.
Against Ecuador and Paraguay there were six defeats and a draw.
The excursions to Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela accumulate a record of five falls and one equality.
Against Peru, four and two.
And against Chile, in Santiago, Bolivia has five defeats and two draws.
In truth, one of those matches ended 0-0 but, due to poor inclusion of a Bolivian player, FIFA gave the locals a 3-0 win.
It is still a synthesis: Bolivia lost even when it had not.
You can follow EL PAÍS DEPORTES on
and
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
.