'Pepe' Soto and the claim of Alianza Lima: “The classic has to be the starting point. It is only worth winning”

Alianza Lima will play as a visitor this Sunday, April 17 against Universitario de Deportes in the Peruvian football classic. The match will take place as part of the 10th date of the 2022 League 1 Opening Tournament and will be crucial to the interests of both teams. In this regard, José 'Pepe' Soto emphasized that in this match it should be the starting point for the 'whites' to rebound in the standings.

“From a very young age they told us: 'anyone but the classic rival'. Sunday has to be the starting point and the players know it. By the head they know that it is a nice opportunity to reverse all this bad situation that they are going through. If you play a good game and you don't win, it's going to be more of the same. But if you win the game, playing well or not, people will thank you,” the coach said in an interview with GOLPERU.

And the fact is that the 'intimates' are not going through the best moment of the season, since so far in the tournament, they have scored only 8 points and are in thirteenth place. In short, they have won 2 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses. Numbers totally different from those they got last year. For this reason, they must be tuned to win the 'cream' cast.

Another theme that the former 'intimate' player touched on was the motivation that a player needs to face these kinds of encounters. “In these kinds of matches, I think you don't need motivation because you have to motivate yourself. The player who is not motivated for this classic does not have to play it. Everybody sees you, the coach of the national team. Look that there are many emissaries from Europe came to see such a player and took another one, it happens in the classic. Anything can happen in football, but you have to kill yourself,” he said.

Indeed, these matches are very disputed and have all the condiments to ensure that the show is guaranteed. No team wants to lose and that is where the footballer shows what he is made of the most. Each one is a different story, so, as part of football folklore, details, jokes, bets, mischief will be present, especially in the fans of both teams.

LOSS TO COLO COLO

Now, as mentioned above, Alianza Lima does not arrive in the best way, even more so, with the last defeat in Copa Libertadores against Colo Colo. “According to the result, the feeling in Alianza Lima is not good. The Copa Libertadores demands you. With Colo Colo they went looking for the match too late. Last year scoring Alianza was very difficult. They scored you a goal and from there to open that 5 defense it was very difficult. But now there are moves, which surely the teams in Peruvian football don't do, and they give you space, break a line and score you the goal. Colo Colo came to him a lot in the first half”, he analyzed.

ORIGIN OF THE DOWNHILL OF ALIANZA LIMA

In order to find the source of the problem of this decline, Soto considered that it goes more through a topic of the level of footballers in general, than any other factor. This is because it is almost the same team that came out champion in 2021 . “The problem is the level of the players because the system is the same. I think there are one or two changes compared to last year. They have the same technician. But Alianza is a team that forces you to give more, I know the players will. These are situations that happen on a campus. They have a fan that accompanies them and I think that's going to get them out of this hole,” he said.

In fact, coach Carlos Bustos added to his team important players such as Christian Ramos, Pablo Lavandeira, Cristian Benavente. It also has Aldair Fuentes, Darlin Leiton and Jonathan Medina, who also make up the squad but with less participation. Therefore, they have hardly changed in the starting eleven, where only the top 3 constantly alternate in the starting eleven.

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