https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/ar...ez-interview-moises-caicedo-ecuador-world-cup
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One of Caicedo’s mentors on his journey to the top was Spanish coach Miguel Angel Ramirez, who crossed paths with the player when, in June 2018, he took over as head youth coach at Ecuador’s Independiente del Valle, a club famed for its talent development. Now coaching MLS team Charlotte FC, Ramirez recalled his time with Caicedo to FIFA+.
First meeting: “He was injured when I arrived. He’d had a few operations and he was working his way back to full fitness. He’d started to play again for the U-18s, his age group, and they were talking to me about him. I don’t know if it was a turning point but
there was a tournament we went to in Spain that was a very big moment for him. We’d been invited by Real Sociedad to bring our 2002 generation, though we could also take players born in 2001, Moises among them. People in Spain loved watching the team and we beat the best academies in the land before losing the final. That was when we saw how reliable a performer Moises was. We saw what he had to offer.”
Making the step up: “We’d pick lads from the youth teams all the time and when a space came up one day it was his turn. Moises would have made it without us anyway. Juan Manuel Lillo (a Spanish coach who is currently an assistant to Pep Guardiola at Manchester City) once said, ‘Some flowers grow on the road’. Even if things had been a bit tougher for him, Moises still would have made it.”
A change of position:
“He was a No5, a midfielder. In a 4-3-3 formation, he’d be the only central midfielder. That’s the position he started out in when he joined the first team, and in the first few games he played for me he replaced [Cristian] Pellerano. In his first Copa Libertadores match, though, we gave him the No8 jersey and he scored, against Junior de Barranquilla. That showed us that he could be more influential in that position.”
An attacking midfielder in the making:
“We could see that his weakest point at No5 was hitting long balls, which is something you have to do quite a lot of in that position. He didn’t strike it cleanly and he’d hit it faster and flatter than it needed to be. If you’re playing further forward though, you don’t have to hit that pass so much. It’s all about short and medium-range passes. Strangely enough, he’s got a great shot on him, and he can finish from outside the box and the edge of the box. Kids who play at altitude like to shoot from outside the box because they know they can hit it faster and put more effect on the ball. So he was taught to shoot on goal as soon as he had a bit of space.”
Box to box:
“In the No8 shirt he had an impact no other player could give us. He was a box-to-box midfielder who helped out so much in defence, doing all the repetitive stuff, but who could also play the killer ball, score, and get into the opposition box. He could see that he was more involved in the game, especially in attack. One day he said to me that he preferred being a No8. It also allowed us to put him in the first line of defence along with our centre forward, who was Gabriel Torres at the time. With the legs he had he’d force a lot of opposition errors whenever they tried to play the ball out from defence. What with the press we had and having Moises in the front line, it saved us a lot of work at the back when we played against teams that dared to play out from defence, because he’d force the opposition to make mistakes.”
Tough love: “It was his birthday and he asked the physio for permission to go and celebrate it at home. The physio asked me and I said no, he couldn’t go home because there are no days off when you’re injured. So he plucked up the courage and asked me in person. I said to him, ‘No, Moises. You can’t go home. You’re injured. You’ve got to keep on working. You can’t miss a single day of your recovery because, if you do, then it’s a day longer that you have to wait to be fit again.’ It was a way of teaching him about what lies ahead, what awaits him in the professional world, because as soon as he left Ecuador he was going to be celebrating birthdays on his own because his family was back here. I wasn’t going to budge but I thought that was how I should teach him about what lay ahead. Five minutes later he was on the bike in the gym, crying his eyes out. And that’s where he stayed. Without saying a word to me he went back home that night to celebrate his birthday, but he came back in the morning for his treatment. He got what he wanted and so did I. He drove for several hours, had his birthday party, and came back the next day to work with the physio. He was really angry. He was angry for a long time, until one day we met up and went for a walk and I asked him how long he was going to be angry for. I told him I just wanted him to learn what things would be like the following year. And he said to me, ‘I wanted to go home because I knew it was going to be the last birthday that I’d have with my family.”
Every blade of grass for Brighton
: “Then there’s the way Brighton play. He’s playing less of a positional game than he did with me, when he had to keep to the structure more and spread himself out better. Now, just as he did in Belgium, he feels he has to come up with solutions to help his team-mates get the ball forward. He’s everywhere, attacking and defending. He’s gets forward, he has the legs to get everywhere, to cover and help out, to get into the area. He’s got drive, he offers himself, and he’s got the ability to keep putting the effort in, which is why he covers every blade of grass.”
Tried and tested in the Premier League:
“In a league in which you’ve got less space to make decisions, Moises has shown that he can do things fast enough to get out of tight and tricky situations. He’s a good communicator with his passing and his movement. He makes it easy for others to find him and he finds them just as easily too. He does all the repetitive stuff, he understands space and he knows where the opposition, his team-mates and the space is. He’s very quick to understand that. He thinks on his feet and does things quickly because he’s got a great first touch and pass. The thing that really stands out about him now is his link-up play and dynamism. You have to have that in the Premier League or you don’t get a game.”
A key performer on the road to Qatar 2022: “
He had the same impact with the national team as he did with us at Independiente. It made him a better player. We had the likes of Pellerano and [Lorenzo] Faravelli around him, and although the national team has a lot of players to choose from, Moises is vital to the way they play and their structure.
Virtually everything goes through him, both defence and attack. Moises is a leader because of his work rate, his creativity and his aggressiveness. He’s young but he’s not the type of leader who goes out and talks a lot. He’s not that type of kid. He’s very quiet. He’s not going to shout and scream and get Ecuador going that way. He does it with his style of play, because he’s vital for La Tri.”
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