The Unpredictable Venezuelan Football

Venezuelan football is unpredictable, without a doubt. You can consider that good or bad, depending on the perspective with which you approach the matter: on one hand, there is no monopoly on results, there is no constant winner. That would be the "good" (yes, in quotation marks). The bad thing is that irregularity and inconsistency reign, and they are the main reasons why there is no clear pattern to distinguish hypothetical candidates.

Of the 18 teams that make up the Venezuelan First Division, the top eight from the regular round qualify for the quarterfinals. The eighth and ninth teams in the table (Zulia FC and Mineros de Guayana, respectively) suffered administrative sanctions for improper alignment, and Deportivo La Guaira, a team that had not been able to surpass the tenth position despite having a squad full of stars, ended up qualifying. That's how the quarterfinals in Venezuelan football were defined.

One of those direct elimination matches was between Caracas FC and Deportivo Anzoátegui. In the first leg, played at the Olympic Stadium of the Central University of Venezuela, just meters away from the sports venue, antigovernment protests were being suppressed with tear gas. In the face of the refusal - or we could call it negligence - of the Federation's delegate and the head referee to suspend the match, the 22 players were forced to play the match under the effects of the gas. Believe it or not.

On the other hand, the Venezuelan Football Federation prohibited a minute of silence, in honor of the protesters who died in the streets, from being observed before the start of each match. Faced with this imposition, and even with the complicit censorship of the television network in charge of broadcasting the matches, the players remained motionless during the first minute of the match to fulfill their heartfelt tribute.

These are some of the snapshots of what the last football semester in Venezuela was like.

But going back to purely sporting matters, and after favorite teams like Deportivo Táchira or Zamora were eliminated in previous rounds, Monagas and Caracas, much to everyone's surprise, faced each other in the final to determine the Apertura champion.

Monagas

With a squad made up of players discarded by other teams, and representing an institution that had never been able to be champion in its 30-year history, coach Jhonny Ferreira remained true to a style of play that took some time to come together, far from immediate success. And it happened at just the right time.

The team from the city of Maturín, within a format that prioritizes spectacle over consistent results, demonstrated that with a checkbook, immediate success is not guaranteed, and even more importantly, that when you work conscientiously and exploit the virtues of a squad to the fullest, it is possible to achieve glory.


From Venezuela
​Anthony Abellás (@AnthonyAbellas)