There’s a touch of embarrassment in Nestor Lorenzo’s laughter when he’s asked about what happened as he walked into the post-match press conference in Phoenix on Saturday.
Instead of the room falling silent when he sat down, there was a round of applause for a man who had just overseen a 5-0 victory over Panama to take Colombia into the Copa America semi-finals in style.
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“That’s not usual,” Lorenzo says, smiling. “The Colombians get a little bit excited about the performance. I always try to bring them to the real level — we are still growing and looking for many things that the team has to improve to be a candidate or a champion. In the first half against Panama, I didn’t like what I was watching. I would like to play better, even (if we are) winning 5-0.”
Lorenzo is not the sort of manager to get carried away, which must be easier said than done when you are in charge of a national team that is unbeaten in 27 matches and the media, let alone the supporters, are celebrating your success. “Twenty-seven, Nestor!” was one of the cries from the floor after he answered the last question on Saturday night.
“And we played against Spain, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Brazil, Uruguay, USA twice, Mexico twice,” Lorenzo says, reflecting on that run. “But I never talk about 26, 27, 28. I always talk about the next match.”
Lorenzo is talking about that next match — Uruguay in the Copa America semi-finals — at Colombia’s team hotel in Charlotte late on Monday night. He is also talking about playing alongside Diego Maradona, why James Rodriguez reminds him of David Beckham, the Premier League manager’s job that he turned down in 2017 and about the 1am wake-up call that he received 34 years ago to tell him that he was starting in a World Cup final.
But most of all, Lorenzo is talking about Colombia, a country where he has spent the best part of a decade working with the national team, first as assistant coach to Jose Pekerman and now as manager, and where he feels a special connection to the supporters who have taken this proud 58-year-old Argentinian to their heart.
“I know the feeling of Colombian people; I have a lot of friends in the country,” Lorenzo says. “I don’t know about feeling Colombian, but I get emotional when I hear the national anthem. And whatever I do, I want to give my best for Colombia. The people understand that.”
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Lorenzo was appointed as Colombia manager in June 2022. He succeeded Reinaldo Rueda, a Colombian who had failed to lead the country to the 2022 World Cup finals. Although Lorenzo had coached alongside Pekerman for Argentina and Colombia, his only managerial experience was with Melgar in Peru.
Some people — Carlos Valderrama, one of the country’s greatest players, among them — made it clear that they would have preferred another Colombian to be in charge.
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How did Lorenzo view the public’s response to his appointment?
“The reaction was good,” he says. “They remembered me as Pekerman’s assistant. But there was also a question about what I could do now that I was alone.”
Lorenzo smiles. “I was quiet with my ideas.”
That was probably a good thing, because what Lorenzo saw as a priority wouldn’t have been anywhere near the top of the list for a lot of Colombian people.
Rodriguez was playing his club football in Qatar at the time, for Al Rayyan. At best, Rodriguez’s club career had drifted. At worst, he looked totally lost. He had been left out of the Colombia squad for the 2021 Copa America and — as difficult as this line is to believe now — divided opinion back home. A lot of people had given up on him.
In that sense, it was a bold call on Lorenzo’s part to name Rodriguez in his first Colombia squad — two friendly matches against Guatemala and Mexico in September 2022 — especially as the midfielder had played only 21 minutes of club football in six months.
Lorenzo shakes his head. “No, no, no, no. They (Rodriguez’s detractors) showed me that they didn’t think like me,” he says.
“The first player I went to see when I took the job was James. I flew to Qatar to see him and to get his commitment to the national team. I said, ‘The first thing you have to do is get out of here and play in a stronger league’. He did that, he changed to Greece, to Olympiacos, even losing money. And I admired that. Not for me; for the national team.
“And then when he was not fit and he didn’t play (at Sao Paulo), I said, ‘Don’t worry’. He did everything to be here at the Copa America. He showed me a great commitment to the national team, and that is why he’s the captain and the leader.”
It’s a story that says a lot about Lorenzo’s management style, not least the way that he can connect with players emotionally and get the most out of them on the pitch.
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Rodriguez has repaid his faith. He has featured in 18 of Lorenzo’s 24 games and started seven of the last eight. The one match Rodriguez started on the bench during that recent run was against Spain, in March, when he was introduced at half-time with the game goalless. Colombia won 1-0.
“James Rodriguez. He was the one who made the difference,” said Spain coach Luis de la Fuente.
That’s been the narrative at the Copa America too. Rodriguez, who is 33 on Friday, has been the standout player in the tournament. He has five assists and one goal to his name and is playing with the freedom, confidence and swagger that he showed all those years ago at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where he won the golden boot and earned a move from Monaco to Real Madrid.
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His performances in the United States seem all the more remarkable because of his club situation in Brazil, where he is out of favour and effectively up for sale.
“The last game he played in Sao Paulo, he was brought on after 85 minutes. He’s not a player to bring on with five minutes remaining,” Lorenzo says. “You have to give him confidence and the team has to recognise him like the player he is. He’s not one more player.”
Rodriguez makes Colombia tick but it is his set pieces at the Copa America that have really caught the eye. Three of his assists have come from dead balls. He hit the crossbar with a free kick against Brazil and Colombia had a goal disallowed in the same game from another of his set pieces. The quick free kick he took on Saturday against Panama to set up Luis Diaz’s goal was sensational.
Lorenzo smiles when it’s put to him that it’s difficult to think of anyone better in those scenarios. “There was another player who was as important with free kicks and corners — David Beckham,” he says. “Beckham’s right foot was wonderful with crosses. James reminds me of him but with his left foot.”
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A deep thinker and smart tactician, Lorenzo adjusted his formation to accommodate Rodriguez, switching from an orthodox 4-3-3 that had served the team well early in his reign — they beat Germany 2-0 using that shape — to a 4-3-1-2 system that allows Colombia to play with an old-school No 10.
“I needed to protect the midfield more and to get control of the ball, and I find this model of play gives us that and we’re still offensive,” Lorenzo says. “It’s not the only way we play, we’ve made many changes to the system even in the same game.”
With a mixture of pace, power and guile, Colombia have got a little bit of everything going forward. Diaz, in the words of Lorenzo, “makes difficult balls look simple” up front alongside the physical presence of Jhon Cordoba, and there’s a lot to like about the two No 8s, Jhon Arias and Richard Rios, who are industrious out of possession and link play intelligently.
Arias won the penalty that Rodriguez converted against Panama and Rios scored a terrific goal from outside the area to make it 4-0. It would be no surprise if both were playing their club football in a top European league soon.
“Richard Rios, this is the first year that he’s in the XI,” Lorenzo says. “I brought him to the national team when he was a sub for Palmeiras. I thought he had good characteristics to play with us and he’s doing well. Jhon Arias had never been called up before I was here and he’s a big player, very efficient.”
Lorenzo smiles as he thinks about the make-up of his squad and how well they are competing. “The only player that we have at an elite club — at one of the biggest clubs in the world — is Luis Diaz. After that, it’s those two (Rios at Palmeiras, and Arias at Fluminense) in Brazil, Yerry Mina in (Italian side) Cagliari, (Jefferson) Lerma and (Daniel) Munoz at Crystal Palace, Jhon Duran — who has a good future — at Aston Villa, Yaser Asprilla (at Watford), James is at Sao Paulo and not playing.
“It was not easy to make this team, but (some) are better in the (national) team than in their clubs.”
Lorenzo laughs when he’s asked whether he has watched the Uruguay versus Brazil quarter-final on Saturday. He knows it’s a loaded question. Of course he has.
“Yeah. I saw a lot of games like the other day. In South America it’s like that,” Lorenzo replies with a wry smile. “The referee allowed a lot of fouls. I hope the next game there will be more football.”
That could be wishful thinking given the way that matches have been refereed in this tournament — the threshold for a yellow card to be shown seems to be high — and that Uruguay will not be changing their approach.
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Pressing aggressively all over the pitch, Uruguay committed 25 fouls against Brazil and it would be naive to expect anything other than a scrap in Charlotte on Wednesday, when Colombia will have to show another side to their game.
A tough and uncompromising central defender in his day, Lorenzo is certainly not going to complain about Uruguay’s tactics. He has a lot of respect for Uruguay and Marcelo Bielsa, another Argentinian coach. “It’s a great team with a great trainer,” he says. “We have chatted sometimes (with Bielsa) because with Pekerman we replaced him in the Argentina national team (in 2004).
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“I know that Bielsa is a great motivational person, very intelligent and I admire him. He gets the best from players and the attitude of the Uruguayan team is very good. It will be tough. I hope we win and play well. But not playing well and winning is not easy for us.”
That comment is interesting. Surely it’s all about the result on Wednesday and it doesn’t matter whether Colombia play well or not?
“It does matter,” Lorenzo says. “But, for moments, it will be a different game and then we have to know how to play that game as well, and that’s what I’m preparing the team for.”
How Colombia play more generally — not just against Uruguay — is clearly important to Lorenzo. Listening to him talk so passionately about his philosophy, you sense that he’s pursuing more than attractive football; he wants to see a connection between this Colombia team and the fans, too. “I always say to the players that they have to transmit a feeling to the people — emotion,” Lorenzo says.
Uruguay’s game is full of that and more. A team that thrives on a siege mentality and on the idea that the odds are always stacked against them, relishes playing on the edge.
Some would argue they overstepped that line at times against Brazil but Lorenzo has a different starting point for that kind of conversation.
“Fouls in football have to be controlled by the referee,” he says. “The referee has to do that for the health of the players. Sometimes I say to the fourth official, or the linesman, if the referee doesn’t show a yellow card there will be another kick — and the next kick could be worse for my players.”
He shakes his head. “Sometimes the journalists ask me why I have not brought off Luis Diaz to protect him. I don’t have to protect Luis Diaz; the referee has to protect Luis Diaz.”
A curious aspect to Lorenzo’s story is the fact that his managerial record was so good with Melgar in Peru (win percentage 56) and now with Colombia (win percentage 75), and yet he waited until the age of 54 to take his first job as a No 1.
Clearly, he enjoyed working alongside Pekerman during a golden era for Colombia — Los Cafeteros reached the World Cup quarter-finals in 2014 after a long period in the international wilderness — but what’s happened since leaves you wondering what might have been.
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“I had an opportunity,” Lorenzo says. “The offer came from Swansea, the chairman was Huw Jenkins, a very nice person. He offered me the job in 2017 (when the Welsh club were still in the Premier League), but I said no because we were in a bad moment here, with Pekerman. The team was not doing very well and we had to try to qualify for Russia. So I said, ‘No, I have an agreement here and I have to follow Colombia.’”
In an industry where loyalty counts for little, it’s hard to imagine many assistant managers making the same decision in those circumstances, especially as Lorenzo had aspirations to coach overseas.
“But when you give someone your word… you have to do what your heart tells you and I felt I needed to be here, to try to help Colombia get to Russia, and we did that,” Lorenzo says. “I just did what I felt in that moment.”
A football career is full of moments and none bigger than a World Cup final. Lorenzo played the full game against West Germany in 1990, when Argentina lost 1-0 in an ill-tempered match in Rome. Carlos Bilardo, one of the most famous managers in Argentina’s history, was in charge at the time and Lorenzo’s face lights up when asked what it was like to play under a man who had led his country to glory at Mexico four years earlier.
“Oof,” he says, puffing out his cheeks. “Bilardo was like a teacher, I learned so from him. He took me to the Olympic Games (in 1988) and to the World Cup.
“He was an obsessive person, always looking for the details and, at the end, those details made the difference in games.”
Lorenzo laughs at what he is about to say next.
“Bilardo knocked on my door at 1am, the day of the final against West Germany. I was with (Roberto) Sensini in the room and Bilardo came to us to give us some information on the final, to say that we would both be in the XI and which player I would be up against. I already knew but he came to remind me — because he wanted to check that I understood.
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“I’m a little bit obsessive with speaking to a player when I remember something that I saw in training, because I like to correct it and make it better. But Bilardo was another level — he didn’t care if it was 1am, 2am or 3am, whereas I try to do it during the day.
“I never knew another person like him. His mind never stopped. But when you knew him, because you had spent many years in his presence, you understood him as soon as he looked at you.”
Maradona was the captain of that Argentina team, and the answer that Lorenzo gives when asked for his favourite memory about one of the greatest players in the world says everything.
“He did something special every day.”
The most enjoyable time watching Maradona, Lorenzo says, was at Argentinos Juniors, back in the late 1970s. Lorenzo was coming through the club’s youth ranks and Maradona — “the pure Maradona,” as he puts it — had just broken into the first team as a teenager.
“His freshness, his talent; I prefer to remember him then,” Lorenzo says. “With his brother Lalo (Raul), who played in the youth team with me, we were waiting to play (one day) and they were training. We were watching and I could never imagine someone with that ability. I was very lucky. Sometimes I say thanks to God for giving me that experience, and then to later go to the World Cup with him was incredible.”
We have been talking for the best part of an hour — Lorenzo’s English is excellent, even though he claims otherwise — and it’s getting late. But there’s just one more question I’d like to ask him: what is the real story behind that black suit and red shirt combination that he keeps wearing in the dugout every game?
Lorenzo breaks into laughter. “That suit I got in Melgar (in Peru) and I went three or four months without losing,” he says. “I pray… it’s much more important to work properly and be confident in God, and then the suit is something that’s more for the (Colombian) people than for me.”
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(Top photo: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)
