Carlos Queiroz

“I’ve been on both sides of the river, as a club coach and now as a national-team coach”

Colombia’s new boss on his Copa America challenge

- Carl Worswick

What has been occupying your time during your first few months as Colombia coach?

Well, one of my first tasks was to find out how many professional players Colombia had across the world, and this took a long time. When we added them all up there were 1,064 on our list. Many weren’t playing in the top leagues or for the biggest clubs, which will always be my priority, but you still have to consider that Fernandinho was a Brazil player when he was playing in Ukraine. My obligation has therefore been to open the doors to all professional Colombian players wherever they might be playing. I have to tell you that this number did surprise me though, because Colombia must be the second or third biggest exporter of players of any country in the world.

What did you make of the friendlies in Asia against Japan and South Korea?

I learnt a lot from them. Just being able to work in close proximity with the players and for those players to have the chance to get to know me was very important. It was also good to give new players the opportunity to play, or those who haven’t played a lot for the national team before.

When you took charge of Colombia you stressed there would be “no revolutions” in breaking from how the team has been playing over the last few years. Do you still maintain that view?