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There are defeats that hurt more than others. Not for the scoreboard or for what the rival does, but for that feeling of having had everything to win and, nevertheless, see how the title drains between the fingers. He just passed to the Colombian women's team, a team full of courage, character and pride that remained, again, stroking glory. And then the awkward question arises: why does it happen to us so often? Why has this “almost” become a constant that pursues us?
We also saw it with the male selection in the Copa América in 2024, with the Sub-20 and the U-17 in the South Americans of this year, and now with these admirable women who deserved much more. We always fight, we always go far, we always get excited … but when raising the cup, something invisible seems to be missing.
There is undoubtedly a huge evolution. With the driving of Ángelo Marsiglia, this team found a solid and liberating operation. And within the field a leading nucleus stands out that holds everything: Mayra Ramírez as a relentless gladiator, Linda Caicedo as an early and unbalanced star, Leicy Santos as a lucid mind and silent guide, and an archera, Katherine Tapias, which responds in the decisive moments.
The group has talent, physical preparation, tactical order and a moving rebellion in the face of a system that has often turned their backs. Being in that instance is not the result of chance; It is the result of effort and character.
So what happens to us when the supreme moment comes? The penalties, with their extreme voltage load, have become a painful mirror. In the 1993 male Copa América we were eliminated by Argentina from the eleven steps in a definition that still weighs us. In the 2018 World Cup in Russia, England returned to take off the world -class dream in the same way. They are not a roulette: they demand technique, decision, inner courage and a mind that does not tremble. And if we almost always lose in that territory, we have to review something.
Will it be a mental matter? A structural lack in the emotional preparation of our athletes? A cultural feature? I listened recently to someone to say, with provocative rawness, that tropical countries will never be power because they have not been historically obliged to face limit conditions, as they have done with the most hostile stations on the planet. Can you have something true? Do we lack that competitive hardness that is built not on talent, but about tempering?
Maybe the time has come – especially if we want to make the definitive leap – to invest both in the head and in the legs; to work the psychological with the same rigor with which the physical and the tactical is strengthened. This selection deserves a title, because it delivered everything. However, perhaps we should stop romantizing the “almost” and encourage ourselves, without excuses, to look straight at what we need to, once and for all, stop being admirable … and start being champions.
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