Can Endrick, Echeverri shine in CONMEBOL U23 championship?

The previous and the way forward for soccer are enticingly entwined in the South American Under-23 Championship, which kick off in Venezuela on Saturday. The reference to the longer term is straightforward to know.

This is a event for younger gamers in a continent that most likely produces extra greats than anybody else in the world. Want to see 17-year-old sensation Endrick, already capped by Brazil at senior degree and on his strategy to Real Madrid in the center of the yr? He will probably be in motion.

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Premier League followers will probably be intrigued by Argentina, with Brighton & Hove Albion’s new signing Valentín Barco and Manchester City goal Claudio Echeverri on responsibility. There are loads of promising Uruguayans, reminiscent of Luciano Rodriguez, a breakout star final yr. Chile have excessive hopes for teenage centre-forward Damián Pizarro. Ecuador’s latest youth improvement work has been glorious — who may stand out for them?

True, the squads should not at full power. This event just isn’t lined by FIFA dates, so golf equipment should not obliged to launch their gamers. Predictably, few European-based kids will probably be in motion, and even MLS is taking part in laborious to get, with LAFC pulling Cristian Olivera out of the Uruguay squad. But, as all the time, the absence of 1 is alternative for an additional — particularly as a result of there’s a lot at stake.

Come the top of the competitors on Feb. 11, the highest two international locations will symbolize South America in the Paris Olympics — and that is the place the significance of the previous comes in.

The Olympic soccer event is a giant deal in South America. This is the game at which the continent excels. By means of instance, for the house public the excessive level of the Rio Games in 2016 was the Neymar penalty, which meant that Brazil had lastly gained the soccer gold medal, the title which was lacking to finish the set of gold, silver and bronze. In your entire historical past of the Summer Olympics, the one medal that Paraguay has gained was silver in the soccer event of 2004, runners-up to Argentina.

Uruguay’s solely two gold medals got here from soccer — in 1924 and 1928, a historical past which is able to dwell on in the design of the shirts the Uruguayans will probably be carrying in the subsequent few weeks. In a quiet, largely forgotten means, these two gold medals, and particularly the groundbreaking first, proceed to sparkle throughout the planet — even in the present competitions happening in Africa and Asia.

Uruguay arrived unheralded for the Paris Games of 1924. They represented a tiny nation from the opposite facet of the Atlantic — and ended up cruising to the gold medal, profitable all their matches with an gathered rating of 20-2. It was not simply what they did. It was the best way that they did it. The French press and public have been hypnotised.

Gabriel Hanot, a journalist of huge affect who watched Uruguay on the 1924 Olympics, wrote that the Uruguayans “created a beautiful football, elegant but at the same time varied, rapid, powerful and effective… they have pushed towards perfection the art of the feint and the dodge, but they also know how to play quickly and directly.”

English professionals, after all, couldn’t play in the Olympics, and have been nonetheless broadly seen as one of the best round. Were they higher than these Uruguayans? There was just one reply — a World Cup, open to beginner {and professional} alike. When Uruguay gained one other gold medal in Amsterdam 4 years later — beating Argentina in the ultimate — the beginning of the World Cup turned an inevitability. It was hosted — and gained — by Uruguay in 1930, and a practice had been based.

Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay gamers, then, have rather a lot to dwell as much as over the subsequent few weeks. This isn’t any Olympic soccer event. It celebrates the centenary of what arguably was the beginning of the trendy age of the worldwide recreation, in the identical metropolis because the historic occasions of 1924.

Uruguay will really feel an obligation to qualify, and are in a position to promote quite a lot of gamers who gained the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup. But there are solely two slots accessible. If Uruguay are to make it, then Brazil or Argentina will miss out. Colombia will probably be sturdy, Ecuador have loads of expertise, Venezuela will wish to keep their latest momentum and do properly in entrance of their very own followers.

The 2024 South American Under-23 Championships look properly price following in their very own proper — all of the extra so given the best way that the event will reveal slightly little bit of soccer’s future whereas additionally venerating its previous.