Remembering the best moments of the sports career of Juan Carlos Oblitas, the new general director of football for the FPF, is like walking through the corridors of a museum where the entire World Cup history of Peruvian football appears. The only thing he missed was participating in the 1930 Uruguay World Cup. And this is not an exaggeration.
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The second World Cup in which Peru participated was Mexico 70 (the first time a qualification was achieved on the field, as the 1930 World Cup was an invitation). In that tournament, Oblitas was not called up, however, at the age of 19 he was one of the "sparrings" of the main team. Since then, the national teams have formed a team of juniors to train with the senior players. This way of working is still in place today; for example, Jairo Concha, now a member of the senior national team, was a junior sparring partner in Russia 2018.
What was his main quality on the field? 'Ciego' himself has said it in countless interviews. In that golden generation of Peruvian football between the seventies and eighties, Juan Carlos Oblitas is not recognized as the fastest or the most skilled. Oblitas attributes his success to tactical intelligence: that special talent for being in the right place at the right time.
For the 1978 Argentina World Cup and the 1982 Spain World Cup, Oblitas was a starting left winger, hardly anyone could compete for his position. And in the return to the World Cup in 2018, Oblitas - already retired as a coach - held the position of sports director of the Peruvian Football Federation. He was responsible for convincing Ricardo Gareca and, this week, he led the negotiations for Juan Reynoso to sign as the new coach of the national team.
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