Former coach of the Peru National Team Ricardo Gareca gains ground in the race to be the next Independiente coach, although Julio César Falcioni remarked that he has a contract until July 2023 and pointed against the new leadership headed by the elected president, Fabián Doman.
Falcioni is not to the liking of the group that won the elections last Sunday and, although the team was on the rise, Wednesday’s defeat against Central Córdoba of Santiago del Estero in Avellaneda accelerated the search for a replacement by the end of the year. In that context, Gareca is chosen to lead the team in 2023 and have a second stage in Independent.
Shortly after winning the elections, the new president, Fabián Doman, pointed out that as soon as he takes office next week he will sit down “to chat with Falcioni to see if he agrees with the club’s philosophy. Julio is not to our football taste, we would not have gone looking for him, but he is a very good person, he is a gentleman. We have to chat with him, listen to him. We assume that there is a contract, but we do not know if they pay him, if he charges or not … “said the television host.
“My continuity? I am calm for what I do. The statistics speak for themselves. If the leadership wants something else, it would be good if they expressed it in private. I came to work”Falcioni expressed in the press conference after the match with the people from Santiago. In that line, he remarked: “I am an employee and I have a contract until July 2023, not until the end of the championship. If they already called me or not, it’s private.”
“I don’t rule out the possibility of managing it one day. It’s the club where I retired (as a player)”Gareca declared five years ago, that he is free after passing through the Peruvian team. In addition to closing his stage as a footballer in Independiente in 1994, the former technical director of Vélez returned in 1997 but to sit on the substitute bench, in what was his first experience as DT in the highest category after having directed San Martín de Tucumán and Talleres de Córdoba in the National B.
In that first campaign as coach of Independiente, Gareca had ten wins, ten losses and six draws Y He left at the end of that year to make room for the return of César Luis Menotti, who returned to the country and the club after a failed spell at Sampdoria in Italy.
As a player, Gareca had a stage in Independiente in the twilight of his career. He arrived in 1993, he stayed until the following year, he played 47 games and scored 11 goals. But the most important thing was that there he won his only title as a footballer in Argentine football: he was crowned in the Clausura tournament of 1994 forming part of that very good team led by Miguel Angel Brindisi. And in the last match against Huracán, he scored the final goal.