Javier Mascherano, Pablo Escobar and Jimmy Bran, among the young coaches who will debut in the South American sub-20

They changed the boots for the blackboards and are on the verge of directing a South American sub-20 team for the first time. With the Argentine Javier Mascherano at the helm, a new generation of coaches makes its debut in the tournament that starts on Thursday in Colombia.

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The former FC Barcelona and Liverpool integrates the range of young coaches with a recent past as players, together with his compatriot Fabricio Coloccini on the Venezuelan bench, the Bolivian Pablo Escobar in the national team or the new Jimmy Bran in Ecuador, the defender of the title, among others.

“I have no commitment to anyone,” says the coach of the Ecuador under-20 team for the call to the South American in Colombia

At 38 years old and two years since his retirement as a soccer player, Mascherano is the youngest of the ten coaches who will fight until February 12 for the title, one of the four South American places for the World Cup in Indonesia and one of the three tickets to the Pan American Games in Santiago.

Among his colleagues, the average age is 44.6 years, the youngest of the last editions (50 in 2019 and 49.5 in 2017).

boss from the bank

Retired from Estudiantes de La Plata in 2020, Mascherano entered a year later to be part of an ambitious project that places its trust in former players to direct all categories of the Albiceleste.

In December, Lionel Scaloni became the second youngest coach to win a World Cup (44 years old), when he led Lionel Messi and company to lift the title in Qatar.

The legendary Walter Samuel, Roberto Ayala and Pablo Aimar accompanied Scaloni as assistants in the task of returning Argentina to maximum glory after 36 years. Under that same ideology “the little clown” Aimar directs the sub-17 and Mascherano the sub-20.

The idea is to “alienate all the youth teams within a methodology, (…) under the same game model” that is always “agreed upon with the coaches of each category,” Mascherano said on the Youtube channel of the Argentine Federation of Soccer in 2022.

In Colombia, the “little boss” will also have the task of shaping future replacements in the senior team for Messi or Ángel Di María, for whom he served as squire in midfield before hanging up the boots.

The idea is “to prepare these boys so that one day they have the chance to play in the senior team,” he was convinced in an interview with Channel 9.

master and disciple

The model of Argentine success has a franchise in Venezuela. At the end of 2021, José Néstor Pekerman took over the management of Vinotinto with an objective between his eyebrows: to qualify for the World Cup for the first time.

With a view to achieving that purpose, Pekerman appointed former defender Fabricio Coloccini to the U-20 team, one of his disciples when he was the World Cup champion in the category in 2001.

Recognized for his time at English Newcastle, the 40-year-old “lion of the metro” will have his first experience leading a team.

Coloccini “is going to be important for the Pekerman process” training players who can integrate the senior team in “one, two or three years,” Hovannes Marsuian, an analyst for the specialized youth soccer website La Pizarra del DT, told AFP.

Change of model

The new wave of young coaches in the U-20 teams turns around the traditional model in South America, where “usually they always try to get experienced coaches because the treatment of youth has always (was thought) as that role of an older person who has authority”, analyzes Marsuain.

The competition that seeks the next stars of the continent will also see Bolivian Pablo Escobar coaching his team after retiring in 2018 and brief stints with The Strongest and Sol de América from Paraguay.

Also Jimmy Bran looking for the two-time championship with Ecuador in his first experience as DT or the international debut of Marcelo Broli and Patricio Ormazabal, of ephemeral steps for modest teams from Uruguay and Chile, respectively.

“They are coaches who may not have a huge career path (…) but they are highly experienced people in communication” with young players, remarks Marsuain. (D)