COSTA RICA SPORTS NEWS – Did Costa Rica beat Uruguay? Or did Uruguay beat itself? The article by Andreas Campomar in the New York Times, titled “A Nation Teased by a Stale Promise of Supremacy”, we get an insight of what may have gone wrong for the Uruguayans on Saturday.
Campomar writes, “The seeds of Uruguayan exceptionalism were sown early. After the country hosted and won the inaugural World Cup, in 1930, the president of the Uruguayan Football Association gave a moving speech in which he stated his expectation that the country take its place as the first among all nations.
“For Uruguayans, however, this notion of having been worldbeaters — compounded by a victory over Brazil in the 1950 World Cup final — was now ingrained in the nation’s psyche. The words of the Uruguayan coach Ondino Viera years later would only reinforce the nation’s distorted attitude toward the game: “Other countries have their history; Uruguay has its soccer.” He failed to realize that other countries possessed both.”
According to Campomar, Uruguayans seem to have long memories only when it suits them, the old colonial Montevideo (Uruguay’s principal city) is fast dying out, usurped by a shinier 21st-century version of what Uruguayans feel a Latin American city should be.
Click here for the complete article by Campomar in the New York Times…
