Goal : After just 96 days and three competitive matches in the job, five in total including two friendly victories, the Colombian Football Federation has swung the axe on coach Leonel Alvarez.
The 48-year-old, who was a key member of Colombia’s 90s golden generation, was shown the door following an executive meeting in which president of the Colombia Football Federation (Colfutbol) Luis Bedoya declared “corrective action” had been taken.
With four votes to three, Alvarez’s fate was sealed. The men in suits, hungry to reach the World Cup finals for the first time since 1998, had had enough.
Four points on the board in the race to qualify for Brazil 2014 was deemed unsatisfactory and, with a knee-jerk reaction, Alvarez was cast aside. For those who’d long besmirched South American football culture as having a fickle disposition, Bedoya’s impatience enhanced that tattered reputation.
In fact, and as Alvarez will no doubt later confirm, the decision had been made weeks prior.
November 15 to be precise, and as a sweaty, dishevelled Alvarez pushed his way out of the baking Caribbean sun and past a baying orgy of journalists an ache of agony creased the trainer’s face.
He’d just witnessed a capitulation. In Barranquilla, Alvarez was exposed as he failed to respond to a tactical reshuffle by Argentina, which changed the face of a key World Cup qualifier. Colombia had led 1-0 at half-time, but goals from Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero handed an impotent Alvarez his first loss. From then on the writing was on the wall.
Four weeks later, he was gone.