The end of…

July 14th, 2011 | by: Marty | Comments Off

The end of another featureless couple of matches from a Bolivian perspective and, goal and draw against Argentina apart, another featureless, winless tournament. (At least we were able to visit one of the matches, sort of.)

A month ago, eating dinner with two Bolivians in La Paz, I listened in as we watched our team lose to Paraguay at home in a practice match and one of my friends called Bolivia “Es país de casi” (The nearly country.) And, even though we kind of sucked in the last half of this tournament, there are still what ifs and ‘casi’ moments. If Moreno had put his one-on-one chance away to give us a 2-0 lead against Argentina (!!) we probably… possibly would have won, which would have been the upset of the decade and potentially given us enough points to reach the quarter-finals for the first time since our home tournament in 1997. Moreno also missed sliding in a close, open goal to give us the lead against Costa Rica.

You’ll forgive me if I only give minute focus to Bolivia’s standard, boring losses on this site. I would rather let them slide and react to our positive moments. Go read our opponents’ pages if you want analysis of Falcao, Aguero, Joel Campbell and co.

I’ll stick around giving my take on Copa America 2011 as things develop, even though Bolivia’s gone.

By the way, sorry about my inconsistencies regarding Bolivia’s main striker. His maternal last name (Bolivian mum) is Moreno, his paternal last name (Brazilian dad) is Martins. Marcelo Martins, Marcelo Moreno and Marcelo Martins Moreno are all the same person.