Ten candidates for two prizes. The road that leads to Paris in South American football is not easy, since Saturday the U23 Olympic Pre-Olympic has been held in Venezuela from which the two teams will qualify for next summer's Games.
Endrick and Kennedy's Brazil will try, as always, to get all the attention but it is Argentina and Uruguay, framed in the same group in the first phase, that draw the most romantic and beautiful story before the ball rolls.
Javier Mascherano will sit on the Argentine bench just a year after his failure in the South American U20. The Little Chief then wanted to abandon his position but the AFA, with Scaloni at the helm, convinced him to continue and even agreed to take the reins of the albiceleste in this Pre-Olympic. “If everything goes well, I hope Scaloni can lead Argentina in the Paris Games,” he recently wished.
The Uruguay bench will be occupied by Marcelo Bielsa, in an unusual case, since he is also the senior coach and the youth team coaches will be the ones who will coach the rest of the teams. But Bielsa already agreed in May, when he landed in the Uruguayan country, that he would also take care of the Olympics to control future talents for the senior team.
Mascherano and Bielsa will thus cross their paths again, which have been coming closer and farther apart in the last two decades, since the former Barça player made his debut with the Argentine team in 2003, even before doing so with River Plate, in another unprecedented case. by the Rosario coach. Marcelo Bielsa had fallen in love with Mascherano a year before, preparing for the 2002 World Cup, when a group of young people, with Jefecito and Zabaleta as banners, accompanied the senior team to act as sparring partner.
Now, in Venezuela, the teacher will be able to check how his favorite student is progressing.
