Real Garcilaso celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, and same as before, the club wants its first national title. However, the start of the season was not really encouraging, as the team was surprisingly eliminated in the first round of Copa Libertadores by Deportivo La Guaira (Venezuela) and lost to Pirata FC in the first round of Peruvian Apertura.
Then three wins followed, all at one goal difference, against Universidad de San Martín (at home), Carlos A. Mannucci (away) and FBC Melgar (at home). These were followed by two consecutive defeats, 2-1 away at Alianza Universidad de Huánuco, and 1-0 at home against Deportivo Binacional. This last game was played without audience in the stands, for reasons that have not been made public by the club officials. As a result, Real Garcilaso has three wins and three defeats after the first six rounds and is rather in mid-table than up in front, where it should be according to the wishes of the club owners and of the supporters.
As a consequence, Chilean head coach Héctor Tapia and his assistants have left the club, officially by "mutual agreement".
Héctor Tapia has left Real Garcilaso
This decision is understandable. It's not just the results, but also the fact that the team did not play well in all these official games. Prior to Héctor Tapia's arrival to Cusco, the club managers perfected a series of transfers, meant to make the team stronger. Once arrived, the Chilean head coach did not want to work with some of the newcomers, involving the club in a huge scandal regarding the rights of the players and the respect showed for the signed contracts.
A special case is that of the foreign players, as their number is limited to five in the whole roster, and only three may be used at the same time on the pitch and a fourth one may be on the bench. Real Garcilaso already had foreign players at the time of Héctor Tapia's arrival. Alfredo Ramúa was one of them, and probably the most outstanding player of the team. Danilo Carando, an Argentinian striker, former player of the club, was brought back to the club from Ecuadorian Universidad Católica. Donald Millán has just been signed from Universidad Técnica de Cajamarca. It looked like that these three foreign players were quite enough, but Héctor Tapia brought two more, Chilean defender Robles and Uruguayan winger Souza. While both of them are indeed very good players, it was clear that they could not play all together on the pitch. Donald Millán left the club for Deportivo Binacional, and guess what? Binacional is battling at the top of the table and Millán is one of the top goalscorers of the Peruvian Liga 1. More than that, Héctor Tapia had to use only three out of the four players on the pitch, and one was always left on the bench. The one left on the bench was either Carando or Ramúa, but not Robles or Souza. This was pretty much illogical, because Ramúa and Carando together in the field, and probably even more with Souza, form a very strong attack, while the defense could do well even without Robles. However, Héctor Tapia chose to sacrifice one of the attacking foreign players, when it was obvious that the main problem of the team was in the offensive.
Another special case is that of the young players and of the local players. Last year, regardless of the coach, right back Velasquez and central midfielder Aucca were the two players most used in the field, to cover for the use of young players ("bolsa de minutos"). They are also some of the few local players in the team, born and raised in Cusco. This year, neither of them has been used, and Héctor Tapia did not even care too much about the young players, leaving this issue to the forthcoming head coach, who will have to use young players for many minutes from now on in order to achieve the requirements set by Liga 1 regulations. He used mainly newcomer Javier Núñez, as a winger, and for brief periods, Alexander Lecaros. He did not use other local players, as well as others who played for a long time for Real Garcilaso, such as goalkeeper Christan Ortiz (only used in the first leg of the Copa Libertadores match, away in Caracas) or Jhoel Herrera.
In brief, Real Garcilaso has a very strong roster, on paper, but head coach did not know how to use these players properly. Losing to newly-promoted sides like Pirata FC or Alianza Universidad is somewhat shameful for a club that wants the national title. The defeat at home by Binacional, a side generally considered much weaker, was the final drop for Héctor Tapia.
Juan Reynoso will be the new head coach of Real Garcilaso
Juan Reynoso is expected to be the new head coach of Real Garcilaso. Former Peruvian international, he also had a great coaching career, winning the title in Peru with Coronel Bolognesi (2007), Universitario de Deportes (2009) and Melgar (2015).
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