The country’s top players also remain at loggerheads with the nation’s press and public. This harks back to an incident involving four players, including Claudio Pizarro and Jefferson Farfan, behaving with indiscipline at the team hotel following a home game.
Even though their ban has now passed, coach Jose Del Solar is yet to recall the four players to the national set-up. If English players think they have it bad with the press they should spend some time in Peru when the differences between the have and have-nots is as acute as anywhere in the world.
If a problem with bad attitude wasn’t enough, Peru has also fallen foul of having bad altitude.
Peru was dismayed at a FIFA ruling last year which prohibited games being played at more than 2,500m (8,200ft) above sea level. Peru has pulled off some remarkable results in World Cup qualifiers in Cuzco which stands at 3,400m (11,154ft) above sea level.
South American heavyweights Argentina and Brazil have both fallen foul playing at high altitude, where the thin air hands an advantage to the home side accustom to the conditions. In a kowtow to these giants of world football Blatter imposed a ban saying, “To play at above that altitude is not healthy or fair.”
However, this ban was overturned in no small measure to a 47-year-old Diego Maradona having a kick about with Bolivian president Evo Morales at an ear-popping 11,811ft above sea level in La Paz.
Evo Morales compared the ruling to a “football apartheid” but will he still be able to count on Maradona’s support when Diego arrives in Bolivia next March for his second competitive game as Argentina boss?
3 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete