The new coach of San Lorenzo, Rubén Darío Insúa, set out this Thursday to “talk little and work a lot” to get the team out of the football crisis, a philosophy taken from an old football master like Osvaldo Zubeldía, the last champion coach in the old La Plata Avenue Gasometer.
In his official presentation, after directing the first practice at the head of the professional squad, Insúa also cited “Patón” Edgardo Bauza, responsible for the only Copa Libertadores in the club’s history, from whom he will adopt the idea of forming a team “of back to front.”
The new coach stated his intention to put together a “strong and competitive” San Lorenzo, based on a “work culture” that will focus on “professionalism, order, discipline, quality and talent.”
Bluntly, the “blaugrana” emblem reminded the footballers of a postulate of Zubeldía, champion of the Metropolitano ’74 in Boedo: “I remember that he always said: ‘for you to do well in San Lorenzo, you have to work’. And that is what we will look for: talk little and work a lot”.
“We have little time until the start of the championship (first weekend of June), just over two weeks, but we are going to try to build a way of working, that is the only thing that matters to me today. I spoke with the players and told them that everyone starts from scratch”, he explained in his analysis of the current moment. Insúa said that he will seek to “surround the team with affection and demand” to extract the best from each player and build towards the future. “We all have to rise to the occasion to get results,” he got involved.
San Lorenzo, marked by the instability of its bench in the last five years, will start the next championship in 20th place in the table of averages, which will condemn those teams located between 24th to relegation. 28th place. Currently there are six points that distance it from that red zone.
Faced with the institutional reality, which he eluded in his answers, and the sporting reality, Insúa expressed “cautious optimism” and recalled the context of his previous technical cycle, in the 2002/03 season: “If I didn’t have high self-esteem I wouldn’t be here. Things change from the inside and when I had to take charge of the team back in 2002, it wasn’t an easy time either. Almost 22 players had left that champion squad with (Manuel) Pellegrini and the club was in a call for creditors”.
“We took charge, we monitored the lower divisions, we began to work and in a short time we achieved something that had never happened in the club’s history: to be champions for the third year in a row,” recalled Insúa, six-month-old 2002 Copa Sudamericana champion coach of your arrival.
On this occasion, he will once again pay attention to the lower divisions and warned that he will give value to players with a lot of work contraction: “We are looking for a certain profile, with technique and a specific physical biotic. You have to have temperament and be prepared to play with the same rhythm for 97 minutes”.
“Football players who play well will always have their doors open but they will have to do a lot of merit. This place is not for everyone, San Lorenzo is a very big club, with world prestige. The preparation must be of high intensity every day: When you have air and legs, the head works better,” he explained.
Asked about the style of play to capture, Insúa recalled an old chat with “Patón” Bauza, shortly after his arrival at the club in 2014. “At that time he told me that the team ran better forward, so he sought to accommodate him in defense We will seek to build the team from the back to the front, making it strong in both areas to keep zero in our own goal and hurt the rival.”
Later, he assured that he will request reinforcements for “the three lines of the team” (“if they played for the club and were champions, the better”) and hoped that there may be “a couple of good news” in this regard in the coming days. “You have to prioritize quality before quantity,” he clarified.
Insúa, 61, a former midfielder trained at the institution, scorer of the promotion goal in 1982, was introduced by the current president, Horacio Arreceygor, and the new coordinator of Professional Football, Matías Caruzzo. “I am in the place that I always wanted to be. We had a meeting on Thursday of the previous week with leaders and with Caruzzo, and I always had the optimism of being the chosen one. I never felt like a plan B,” he said about the outcome of a search in which more than half a dozen technicians were contacted.
“It’s a good time to return, also personally. I think of directing, at least, 15 more years,” he said unconcerned about the distrust generated by his long absence from Argentine football after his last stint at Talleres de Córdoba in the campaign 2007-2008. “Football is played all over the planet -he relativized-. I am passionate about soccer and I never stopped studying and developing myself with clear ideas, work, knowledge and current affairs”, concluded who spent the last decade in clubs in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. As a coach, Insúa was champion of the 2002 South American Championship in San Lorenzo, runner-up in the ’98 Libertadores with Barcelona de Guayaquil, winner of the Ecuadorian Serie A the previous year and also with Deportivo Quito in 2009.
