The Costa Rican men’s soccer team will face Bosnia-Herzegovina and Mexico in friendly matches in March in European cities, the local federation announced Wednesday.
La Sele will be measured on March 27 against Bosnia-Herzegovina in the city of Zenica and against Mexico on March 30 in a European city to be defined, said the Costa Rican Football Federation (Fedefutbol) in a statement.
The duels will be an opportunity for the Central American team to wash its face after losing the few friendlies it played in 2020.
The matches will allow Costa Rica, with its figures Keylor Navas (PSG, France), Joel Campbell (León, Mexico) and Oscar Duarte (Levante, Spain) to prepare against Mexico before the Concacaf Final Four tournament, scheduled for June, and the Gold Cup in July.
Mexico and Costa Rica are also classified for the final octagonal of the Concacaf qualifying rounds for the Qatar 2022 World Cup. The “Octagon” will begin in September.
It will be the first time that the Costa Rican team has faced Bosnia-Herzegovina, which has in its ranks prominent figures such as Miralem Pjanic, from Barcelona, and Edin Dzeko, from Roma.
The Tico team held only five friendly matches in 2020 and lost them all: one in February against the United States, two against Panama in October, and in November against Qatar and the Basque Country team.
The Costa Rican coach Ronald González said that the matches will allow the team that he formed last November to consolidate as the country finds the base that will lead it during World Cup qualifiers.
“We seek to give continuity to last November’s call, where we were able to see an already more established team. This year we want to begin to stabilize that list,” González said.
Regarding Mexico, González commented that “it is a power in our area, we know that it has good players playing in Europe and has maintained a fairly important hegemony in Concacaf.”
