Peru, Peru, How Do You Do?
A week ago it was gonna be Argentina. A few days later it was Peru. Then it was Chile and Argentina were in complete crisis. Then Lionel Messi did what Lionel Messi does and scored a quick hat-trick and now it really looked like it’d be Chile. Unless Paraguay scored in which case it might be them. Or if Argentina conceded again, then they might find themselves back where they started. Then it was almost certain to be Chile. Then this happened…
And with that the All Whites will compete for a place at the 2018 FIFA World Cup against Peru, over two legs, home and away, in November. Maybe that’s a better prospect than playing Chile or Argentina but Peru didn’t seem too intimidated by the opportunity. With minutes to go in their game against Colombia, word got around that Chile were getting walloped by Brazil and Argentina were cruising to victory in Ecuador. That meant that a draw here and Colombia would advance automatically while Peru would secure fifth place and the playoff.
Colombia could’ve knocked Peru out with another goal and they looked like the more likely team for sure but instead they settled for passing it about and wasting time. Their striker, Radamel Falcao, went around explaining the situation to anyone he could find with ears to listen and the final moments of that game descended into a mutual countdown of the clock. It’s not often the final whistle blows and both teams celebrate.
Naturally there are complaints about match-fixing there but only from the gutted Chilean fans. There’s also some weirdness about Pablo Guerrero’s equaliser too. It was an indirect free kick but Guerrero struck it at goal anyway… and Colombia set up a wall to defend it when there was no sign of another player laying it off or anything. So the ball had to touch another player on its merry way in order to count as a goal, and it did: Colombian keeper David Ospina. Who, besides the controversy, should have been able to save that sucker anyway. Or he could’ve left it to fly straight into the net without a touch and it’d have been disallowed. As such it officially went down as an Ospina own goal.
Lest Chile feel like they don’t have enough to complain about already, there was also the situation back in September last year when a draw with Bolivia at home was overturned because of an ineligible player after the Chilean FA filed a protest. Only problem was that Peru had lost to Bolivia a few days earlier with the same player in action so that result was overturned as well… meaning Chile gained two points, Peru gained three and they ended up tied on points with Chile eliminated on goal difference.
Ah, cruel fate, how swiftly joy and sorrow alternate!
So what do we know about Peru? What do we know about Peru…? Peru, Peru, how do you do?
Until Peru got that Bolivia result overturned they’d only won one of their first six qualifiers. This is a country that hasn’t made the World Cup since 1982… although they did attend the inaugural World Cup in 1930 so there’s that. The Bolivia result was followed by a 2-1 win against Ecuador, Renato Tapia with the 78th minute winner, and they chased that with a draw at home against Argentina before going down to a 85th min Artuto Vidal winner in Chile. They thrashed Paraguay 4-1 away and then lost 2-0 to Brazil at home. With six games left that left them five points off the playoff spot and only three places off the bottom of the Conmebol standings.
Which is about when things broke right for them. Their last six games they went undefeated. Three wins and three draws, including those two crucial draws at the end – holding Argentina 0-0 and getting that 1-all against Colombia. Now here we are.
Most footy fans should be familiar with Claudio Pizzaro and Nobby Solano. Pizzaro is a fantastic striker who scored 125 goals in 327 games for Bayern Munich and still (occasionally) plays in Germany for FC Koln as a 39 year old. A killer header of the ball who they used to call ‘Inca God’, he also, like many fine strikers of his era, had a regrettable spell at Chelsea in the mid-00s. Meanwhile Solano was a remarkably cool bloke who played on the wing for Newcastle over a couple spells and is so popular in Peru that they live televised his wedding.
Those guys have been and gone though. These days the Peru side is more about guys like Jefferson Farfan (Lokomotiv Moscow), Paolo Guerrero (Flamengo) and Renato Tapia (Feyenoord). Attacker Yordy Reyna plays for the Vancouver Whitecaps, which is funny considering the four kiwi lads all contracted there. He and Stefan Marinovic are in the first team picture and will miss a playoff game for these national games if the Whitecaps advance that far… which could be awkward.
This is from a piece a few weeks ago speculating on the All Whites’ possible opponents:
There aren’t too many star players in the Peru squad. Jefferson Farfan has been around a while, most famously at PSV and Schalke (he’s now at Lokomotiv Moscow). Similarly Paulo Guerrero briefly used to play for Bayern Munich and then also Hamburger SV much less briefly. Andre Carillo is at Watford and Renato Tapia at Feyenoord. Edison Flores plays for AaB in Denmark… a team that just signed Tamati Williams as their reserve keeper. But otherwise most of the dudes who don’t play their club stuff in Peru instead play their club stuff in either Brazil or Mexico.
Manager Ricardo Gareca did take them to the semis of the 2015 Copa America though, just months after taking over in the job. He then bossed the team at the following year’s centenary edition of the Copa where they famously beat Brazil 1-0 to eliminate those jokers before losing on penalties to Colombia in the quarters. Now they find themselves where they are thanks to a win over Uruguay in March and then six points in this latest window (2-1 vs BOL / 2-1 vs ECU). They’re certainly no fluke. This Peru team has been building towards a run like this for a few years now and shouldn’t be underestimated.
(Nothing’s changed so no reason to re-write those paragraphs).
Hopefully there’ll be the chance to watch a few Peru games and get some serious scouting going on how they play but right now we’ve gotta go on first impressions. What’s crucial about Peru is that they won’t need to rely on their best players like, say, New Zealand does. Chris Wood has scored 12 goals since Anthony Hudson took over and nobody else has more than four. We saw what Winston Reid brings to the All Whites against Japan and saw what we lose without him at the Confederations Cup. Ryan Thomas and Stefan Marinovic have more recently launched themselves into the next tier of necessity.
On the contrary, Peru aren’t scared to mix and match under the gaffer Gareca, who has cultivated a proper team atmosphere about them (going as far as blaming his native Argentina’s struggles on their lack of team cohesion… which is probably true). Farfan, who’s had a notoriously up and down career through injuries and bad behaviour, is probably their most talented player but he has been in and out for years. He played and got booked against Argentina and then missed the Colombia game, no dramas. There might not be much difference between the best players on each team but Peru’s worst players will annihilate New Zealand’s worst.
You can expect to see Guerrero starting up front and captaining the team and you can probably anticipate a bit of Renato Tapia in the holding midfield as well. Peru have been playing with variations of a 4-2-3-1 formation, sometimes with two defensive mids and sometimes with an extra creative player depending on the situation. Expect more of the latter versus NZ, especially for the second leg in Peru.
It’ll be interesting to get a look at how much they attack through their fullbacks. The All Whites are gonna struggle for width with the Peruvian wingers keeping their wing-backs humble but if they’re sending those defenders forward on the overlap then… suffice to say that’s how Mexico and Japan both broke the kiwis down, two teams of a similar standard to Peru (arguably a little better, to be fair – definitely Mexico are).
Of course, while we’re taking notes on them, they’re also taking notes on us. The consensus is about what you’d expect: an organised team with a few skilled players but one which prefers to play the ball long into the box for its giant striker. They’re not taking us lightly… but they know they should win.
Which they should. Ignoring the scandalously irrelevant FIFA rankings, Peru are still a far better side. More depth of players and far more technique across the field. New Zealand have done well to get some competitive games this year but it’s not like they won any of them whereas Peru just came through in the top half of a South American qualifying section which has provided nine of the 20 historical World Cup winners. There’s no comparing Brazil to the Solomon Islands. Bolivia would still be favoured over the All Whites, Peru are overwhelmingly so.
Then what do the All Whites have to cling to here? The pressure of the occasion is always something, especially for the team expected to win. Peru’s home-field advantage in the second leg is a worry but if Aotearoa can sneak an away goal and if we get lucky with a few defensive things then that advantage can turn against a team quickly. And it’s possible. Excluding the Bolivia default, Peru only kept two clean sheets in 18 qualifiers and only scored more than two in a game twice (one of those being a 4-3 defeat to Chile in October 2015). Lots of close games and that’s what they’ll need to be for the All Whites to compete – we won’t be able to match a 4-3.
Lots of close games, which might have more to do with the competition in South America than anything else. Still, that’s also something the All Whites can use to their potential… potentially. They don’t play like a South American team and that clash of styles is gonna work both ways. Chris Wood will be a handful for the Peru defence regardless. The height of the kiwis is overrated considering the hobbit-filled midfield but on set pieces, when guys like Reid, Boxall and Smith can get forward, then that idea suddenly matters again. Boxall and Tuiloma’s long throws (if Tui plays…) are another threat.
Maybe we could even do what Jorge Sampaoli allegedly did to Peru a few years ago when he was still in charge of Chile and send one of our assistants over there with press credentials and hustle them into Peru’s training sessions disguised as a journalist. Although we’d better be careful playing those games… coz they’ve got shamans…
TNC’s gonna be all over these World Cup qualifiers so smack an ad or jump on Patreon to chuck the ol’ thumbs up to the feistiest All Whites coverage this side of Declan Edge’s twitter.