Rodney Wallace Discusses Costa Rica's Soccer Struggles

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00:00What is the future looking like for Costa Rica? We saw that several Central

00:05American teams had a golden opportunity now given that Mexico, the US and Canada

00:09had already passed. They wouldn't be on the qualifier and they fumbled the bag

00:13to the benefit of the Caribbean teams. What is going on with CONCACAF and the

00:17Central American countries in specific? Well you brought up the good fact about

00:22El Piojo. He was not the right manager for Costa Rica. Costa Rica in my opinion

00:29fumbled a lot of opportunities to make it to the World Cup. I don't think that

00:34Costa Rica along with some some teams in some countries in CONCACAF, I don't

00:41think they respected the opportunity to go to the World Cup and there is a sense

00:46of pride. There's a sense of there's a sense of safety that some teams had but

00:54there wasn't enough of that well this is the biggest stage of the world. We have

00:59got to make it just because Mexico, Canada and the US are not in it, it's gonna be a

01:05walk in the park and unfortunately Costa Rica learned the hard way, Honduras learned

01:11the hard way and now you have national teams like Curaçao, now you have Haiti

01:17qualifying, you have Nicaragua that isn't in the World Cup but they were giving

01:23teams a business too. So you have to respect it, when you put on that shirt, when you put on that

01:29armor, there's a saying, don't give up your shirt. Don't give up that jersey because once you put it on,

01:37once you see it in your locker room, you put that jersey on and it's your first cap, hold on to it, hold on to it.

01:43because there's weight with that jersey, there's weight with that shirt and it's not

01:47just for you, it's for your family that you're representing, for the country in

01:50general, especially like a country, a country like Costa Rica where there's no

01:54army, there's no, there's no Navy, it almost feels as if we are the soldiers. So

02:01we have a duty to perform and a duty to our country and let's get to the World Cup.

02:07I can't imagine the kids in Costa Rica or the fans, 2026 World Cup in the United States, in Canada,

02:16in Mexico and we're not able to see and live and ponernos la roja and it's hard.

02:23It is hard, it is hard. And especially because it comes from a place that it seems hard now for the

02:31Central American countries to compete with what's happening in the Caribbean, right? They are lucky enough,

02:37to have so many players participating in lower division leagues in Europe.

02:41Yeah.

02:42But that is already a big, big gap between, you know, Central American competitions.

02:47What can be done and what teams like Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras can do to try to stay competitive

02:55in the future?

02:57The infrastructure, we can talk about money. We can talk about that, okay? But where does that money

03:04come from? It comes from the younger generations, the U17s, the U20 World Cup, the tournaments that

03:14happen in between, the Gold Cups, confederations, whatever it may be. Those are big competitions that

03:23allow you to compete, get money, put the money back into your development, allow those young teams to go,

03:33push those teams to go to the World Cup, put the best coaches into that stage of development from a

03:41young age and then you watch them thrive. Then a U17 player is making it into the round of eight in the

03:49World Cup, and now he's being scouted, now he's going to France. And then that whole generation,

03:54six of them, they go to Europe. One of them goes to Portugal, another one goes to Belgium.

03:58Then comes the U20 World Cup, there's a pack of them, there's a core. Then the new generation

04:04comes in, a little, un poquito de sorpresas here and there, players that sneak in from the local league.

04:11Next thing you know, in the U20 World Cup, we got four players that are being now sold. Those players

04:16that were in those clubs in Belgium, Portugal, Holland, they get sold to bigger clubs in Europe. But

04:23there has to be that infrastructure, that system, that ecosystem, that pipeline that takes the young

04:28players to bigger clubs early enough, because you can't have your best players playing at 23 years old,

04:3721 years old, killing it in the local league.

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