The way we are

We’re at the tail end of Bolivia’s once again ill-fated attempt to reach the 2010 World Cup. I’m biased, but in an odd way the Bolivian national team have had a spectacular campaign compared to anything else they’ve done post-1997. Generally Bolivia display two types of performances:

a) Toothless, listless affairs in which they barely turn up and never threaten to score. These generally end as 0-0 home draws or regulation three-goal losses away. Pretty much every Bolivian match from 1998 to 2007.

b) Spectacular matches, generally at home in La Paz, in which they put the opposition to the sword. We’ve had a few of them this campaign:

Bolivia 4-2 Paraguay
Bolivia 3-0 Peru
BOLIVIA 6-1 ARGENTINA, lest we forget

Previously there were some false dawns:

Bolivia 4-0 Colombia 2003, in which Botero scored a hat-trick.

Bolivia 3-1 Brazil 2001, in which Brazil needed a win to end their nightmare 2002 qualifying campaign with success, swaggered in and were taken to the cleaners by our boys. In Brazilian coach Luiz Felipe Scolari’s inimitable words, “They’ve got five little dwarves up front and they’re tearing our defence to pieces.”

The only problem is that a lot of these Bolivian performances start out as the “b” type but mutate into…

c) Matches in which Bolivia outplay their opponent and are winning but lose in the last minutes because of faulty defensive cover and arguably because of the Bolivian nation’s historical inferiority complex. Examples this campaign:

Bolivia 2-2 Uruguay: up 2-0 at half-time, conceded equaliser in 88th minute. A win would have inserted Bolivia into the mix of possible World Cup challengers; a draw left them languishing as usual. Seeing the chances Bolivia wasted in the second half is quite painful viewing.

Venezuela 5-3 Bolivia, in which Bolivia played their best game away from home in years, took the lead three times and led with ten minutes to go, yet conceded ridiculous goals in the 82nd, 89th and 90th minutes.

Previously:

Bolivia 2-2 Peru, 2007 Copa America: A sprightly performance in which a win would have put Bolivia into the knockout rounds for the first time in ten years, but they conceded an 85th minute goal.

Bolivia 3-3 Argentina 2001, the year in which one of Argentina’s greatest ever national teams scored in the 89th and 90th minutes after Bolivia had generally run rings around them. At least we got the 6-1 eight years later.

So despite abundant goals, despite playing a match against Argentina that shook the world and an astonishing drawn match in Brazil of all places, and despite at one point boasting both the South American qualifying competition’s highest goalscorer (Joaquin Botero, 8 goals) and second-highest goalscorer (the great hope, Marcelo Martins Moreno, 6 goals)… for all that, Bolivia are still second-last with less points and wins to this stage than in their terrible 2006 campaign. I just don’t understand it. The country is cursed or something.