Colombia should start to think about 2018. They will probably not qualify for Brazil despite the Canarinha being the host nation and CONMEBOL having their four and a half spots for that World Cup.

When I said that to my friends from other nationalities, they flipped. “C’mon. With Maturana and Gómez you should go far.”

My responses to them were:
“Would you hire Bora again?

"Would you hire Bilardo, Menotti, or Basile again?”

“Would you hire Bob Gansler or Steve Sampson again?”

“What about Mario Zagallo or Carlos Alberto Parreira?”

My friends from Costa Rica and Trinidad I just shut them up by saying four words, “You want him back?”

Sometimes I hate being the one that abruptly ends conversations, but this one seemed to be going nowhere, just like Colombia under Maturana and Gómez. Yes, these are two coaches that took Colombian to three consecutive World Cups; but they have done more harm to the game in the country than good in recent years.

Maturana and Gómez have become what they fought against early in their coaching careers.

It’s been 23 years since Francisco Maturana and his disciples stormed onto the scene and changed the way the game was played there. They gave the national team an identity. They gave the country a style, an idiosyncrasy that generated a great deal of pride.

Los Cafeteros were no longer handcuffed to the pragmatism of Bilardo, Zubeldía, and the greatest disciple- Gabriel Ochoa Uribe. They let their players loose and the game became an expression not just X’s and O’s. We know about high points and their extremely low points.

There was always talent, but they had arguably the greatest generation of players to work with. Success- there was a great deal of it. The national team became an attraction all over the world.

Unfortunately from a coaching standpoint they’ve become the crutch that the Colombian Football Federation always uses whenever they can’t come up with a solution.

Maturana got a lease on his coaching life after winning the 2001 Copa América, but that credit ran out quickly after the national team failed to qualify for 2002. Then his failures at Colón, Gimnasia, and Trinidad had the writing on the wall in full effect. His style of play was outdated and outmatched by teams that were faster and more vertical than his.

Last week Maturana, who is now the national team’s manager, literally talked down to the Colombian football fan when he said there were only five coaches competent enough to take over the Colombia job. In that list he mentioned Luis García. How coincidental that the list quickly shrunk to one- his buddy “Bolillo” Gómez. They are doing everything they can to scupper the game for yet another generation of players and fans.

It also shows how much, or should I say how little, coaching has progressed in Colombia. Most importantly, this demonstrates the lack of vision that Colombian football has at this stage. Is it that bad in Colombia… in a word, yes.
Gómez will most likely become the coach of the national team, his official announcement in imminent. He underwent a transformation when he took over for Colombia and led his to the 1998 World Cup and then did so with Ecuador four years later. There you started to see him become over-tactical and patronizing to the nth degree.

It got out of control when he took over at Guatemala and then jumped ship to Santa Fe. There his ego got in the way of his coaching and his battles with the media took precedent over his primary job- coaching the team. That was the last job “El Bolillo” had. This is the best coach in Colombia?

Buried and gone are the dreams of having the first foreign coach since Carlos Bilardo, and Colombia really needs one. One that would have been great to have, and I have lobbied for him even when he failed at Boca, was Ricardo La Volpe. Can’t forget what he did with Mexico even when the so-called knowledgeable Mexican media wanted him out.

Colombia football fans as a whole got tired of hearing “We lost, but we won.” Moral victories don’t take teams to the World Cup. People don’t spend their hard-earned money to see moral victories.

From the outside looking in it is puzzling to see how a national team with so much potential produces so little when that talent is put together. These types of problems within the national team are just a microcosm of what is going on in the country. James Rodriguez (Banfield), Omar Pérez (Gimnasia), Victor Hugo Montaño (Montpellier), Adrian Ramos (Hertha Berlin), Radamel Falcão García (Porto), and even Fredy Montero and Jhon Kennedy Hurtado (Seattle Sounders) are some of the current stars that are shining abroad. Also add players like Luis Muriel and Giovanni Moreno and the future should be bright, at least from a commonsensical standpoint. But we all know better than to take that approach in politics as well as football.

One thing is for sure, Maturana and Gómez have been able to do what no other coaching duo has been able to- unify Colombian football fans. Oh, they’ve done a great job in doing so because now everyone outside of the Colombian Federation dislikes them and doesn’t want them to run them further into the ground. That is why sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease.