After 3 years James Rodríguez and Juan Fernando Quintero are back together in the national team

The Colombian national team is ready to play the last two dates of the 2022 Qatar World Cup Qualifiers, as this Thursday 24th they will face Bolivia at the Metropolitano stadium in Barranquilla, and Venezuela, as a visitor, on Tuesday, March 20. These two duels will be played for matchdays 17 and 18 of the qualifying rounds.

Colombians Juan Fernando Quintero and James Rodriguez have not played together for the Colombian national team since the 2018 World Cup in Russia when they faced Senegal. After almost four years, the two midfielders will be playing on the same court again.

The times that the two midfielders have been together in some of the matches of the national team have achieved an imbalance in the fourth quarter of the court, something that the team needs right now. The reason that these two lefties did not wear the national team's jersey at the same time was due to injuries, performance and biosafety policies after the COVID-19 pandemic.

To face Bolivia and Venezuela, ideas and goals have to come up. Colombia has not officially scored since September 9 last year, so the presence of these two players will be a key point in fighting for the passage to the Qatar 2022 World Cup.

Recall that in March 2019, Quintero suffered a cruciate ligament injury in his left knee, in a match against Independiente when he was a member of River Plate, this injury left him off the courts for six months.

For his part, James Rodriguez, after playing the 2019 Copa America, was not called up again by Carlos Queiroz. It should be noted that by that time the Colombian was playing again for Real Madrid with Zinedine Zidane in the direction and did not add many minutes.

At the beginning of last year, Quintero went to Shenzen in China, a situation that left him out of the squad squad to play the first days of the qualifiers in Qatar. At that time, James was playing for Everton, but he was not called up for either the qualifying round or the Copa America

Juanfer Quintero returned first after the request of Reinaldo Rueda. For this new call, Quintero was in the triple dates of September and October last year, in which the team's last victory in the qualifying round took place in the match against Chile in Barranquilla, in which Quintero had a very important participation.

Then, for the next few days, Quintero could not travel to Colombia despite being called because the biosecurity policies of the Chinese league did not allow its players to leave the country. By that time, James had returned to the national team after a year of not wearing the yellow shirt. In the past dates the cucuteño was there, but the River player missed these duels after suffering a muscular problem after having played the friendly against Honduras.

Finally, Quintero and Rodriguez have played 11 games together. Seven friendly matches and four official matches, three of them in World Cups and one by knockout. In addition, together they have achieved 9 wins, one draw and one defeat against Brazil in 2014. Between the two they add five scores and nine assists.

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