Chilean National Team Continues with their Preparations for Upcoming Matches

It has been more than 100 hours since Chile won the Copa America, and Jorge Sampaoli's work does not stop. In fact, his rest period has not even started (he will leave at the end of this week).

Yesterday afternoon, he had a lunch meeting with Sergio Jadue, president of the ANFP, in which they basically had to define the details of the upcoming matches for the Chilean National Team until the end of the year.

The focus was on planning the remaining competitive games for the team this year, which includes friendly matches and the first qualifying matches for the next World Cup.

The Chilean Federation has been tempted to play the friendly matches in the Middle East, specifically in Qatar, something that the coach is not fully convinced about. However, money seems to have a strong influence in this decision. Nevertheless, the coach's intention is to play these matches in Chile or in Europe, where the time difference and conditions are more similar to what they will encounter in the qualifiers.

What the coach will not compromise on is the opponents: With the qualifiers just around the corner (the first four matches will be played between October and November), the opponents must be from South America. A new friendly match with Brazil has been suggested as an alternative, but the discussions have not advanced.

A second friendly match is seen as a possibility, but, as mentioned, it must be one of the teams that Chile will face in the 4.5 spots that CONMEBOL has for the Russia 2018 World Cup. If it is not part of those ten teams, it should at least be a similar game. Otherwise, it will not be played.

On July 25th, the draw for the path to the next World Cup will take place. The ANFP intends to have these September friendly matches confirmed or at least very advanced by that date.