COLOMBIA

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back to my land and work in my
profession, I’m going to play
football as I always did, as some
sort of entertainment. I then learnt
that you can do both things, you
can play football and study at the
same time.
It seemed you were closer
to engineering than to the
fields of play, but football had
the upper hand.
In 1967 I returned from
Germany and registered again in
Bolívar. We were three-time
champions: 1967, ’69 and ’70.
I had decided to leave football at
30 years of age. I did not want
to happen to me what had
happened to my teacher Ugarte.
He played until the age of 40 and
he was already declining. He had
gone to Mariscal in Santa Cruz.
Bolívar’s fans that used to idolize
him, mocked him. Why don’t you
retire?, they said. That hurt me and
I did not want to have something
like that happen to me. A fracture
in 1971 forced me to leave
prematurely. I thought it was the
final, though I recovered and
returned to Melgar of Peru, and
afterwards in The Strongest. In
March 1974, when I was 30 years
old, I bid farewell.
You left football.
Yes. I said, I’m going home,
to work in building as an
engineer… And it was so for two
years, but I couldn’t put up with
my decision, for football catches
you and I could not be without it.
It’s like a vice, and I devoted myself
to coaching- I really like it and
prepared myself quite well. First I
had a 15-day course with German
Rudi Gutendorf and Lithuanian
Edward Virba, one in La Paz and
the other in Cochabamba. I was
the assistant of both. Afterwards I
went to Germany again to study
technical coaching in Cologne.
I learnt all my professional
knowledge in Germany and I
speak the language quite well…
Did you go back to
Bayern…?
Of course.... Ten years later I
returned to visit Bayern Munich
and everything had changed. In
1964 the club had nothing, they
rented two pitches in a campus of
102●CSF
the German-American army, a
basis. The dressing-rooms were
moving wooden boxes and you
had to work in very small spaces.
When I returned to Bayern, I had
already won everything, League,
the European Cup…They had
bought all the land. They built a
big building with excellent
dressing-rooms. They still had
Beckenbauer, Müller and Maier
and other players as well. I went
to watch their trainings during
several days.
Why don’t you tell us that
feat of yours in Bolivia 1963?
On Christmas 1962, as I told
you, I returned to Bolivia and the
National Team were getting ready
in Cochabamba for about three
months. The coach was a Brazilian,
Danilo Alvim, who was seeing
people and getting to know the
entourage. I arrived as I had a
permission for Christmas and on
the following day, I had the
concentration. They put me in a
room at a hotel with Víctor Ugarte,
who has been my closer
teammate, a very humble boy. He
was already 37 years old, and I
was only 19. He helped me a lot.
That is to say that Bolivia
took it very seriously, to win it?
Very seriously since we were
the hosts, though nobody thought
that we could win it. That was
something we did not think about.
Things kept growing already in the
same tournament. There were very
good players. We had a serious
competition, friendlies against
Paraguay, Copa Libertadores,
Qualifiers, we played quite a lot.
The first ones were five months
concentrated. We were only three
months. I say “we” because we
were coming with Camacho from
Ferro and he was the National
Team’s captain. All the leaders of
the Federation were there, both of
national and provincial football.
There was a strong union,
everybody realized for the first
time in Bolivia’s history that they
were organizing a championship.
It was a great challenge. About
500 players were analyzed to get a
roster of 20.
And the tournament
started.
But I could not. We had
played two friendlies in Chile and
Paraguay and we played two
matches in three days. We lost
both. In that interim something
totally unexpected happened to
me. After the first match, I had a
kind of black bag on my heel and
it bothered me a lot. I played the
whole match but the following
day, that thing continued to
bother me. The therapist told me
he was going to cut that black
bag. It was a mosquito bite and it
turned very black after cutting it. I
was in the hospital for three days
and the National Team went to La
Paz. I returned with the National
Team to La Paz straight to the
clinique where I remained 7 days.
We began the first match against
Ecuador and I did not play because
my wound was still open, though
the infection was cured. I was
supposed to play starting with the
second match. With Ecuador, in
the championship’s inauguration
we were losing 2-0, but we tied
2-2 and they scored two more.
We were losing by 4-2 and
managed to have a 4-4 tie. The
people that were disappointed by
those defeats in the friendlies,
grew enthusiastic and there was a
great euphoria. We played a
match in La Paz, afterwards in
Cochabamba and thus, we went
and came back.
The following match?
It was against Colombia. I did
not play but I was on the bench
and we won 3-1. The third match
against Peru in La Paz and then
Bolivia was quite different. There
was a change in positions. The
coach put four defenders, three
midfielders, Camacho the ´5´,
Ugarte the ´8´ and Ausberto García
the ´10´. I was in front with Alcócer
and Castillo, that was rather small,
from the Paraguayan Chaco.
Was Alcócer a great
player?
Alcócer was very strong. He
always played inside the area and
was also a striker. Very technical
and very strong. Numbers ‘8’and
‘10’ were very offensive and they
both prepared the game.