Gustavo Alfaro, the coach of the Paraguay National Team, who defeated Türkiye 1-0 in the second match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup Group D, said that they knew how to win against Türkiye and they applied it on the field.
Alfaro, in his statement at the press conference held after the match played at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium, said, “We did not want the 16-year dream to end in 7 days and we achieved it.” he said.
Stating that the match was played with excitement, the experienced coach said, “I believed that my players would do their best on the field with the right mentality. It was a different situation when we played against the USA, we conceded a goal there, but today we scored the first goal. You never know what will happen tomorrow in football, if we had lost the match today then we would have to beat Australia with a very big difference. In that respect, we knew that the Turkey match was very important. ‘Protect my players, if you are going to attack someone, attack me.’ I said. Because I knew the beliefs of the players, we had a very difficult week. It was like everything was going wrong. If things do not go well in the World Cup, you will pay the price, you will be eliminated. We didn’t want the 16-year dream to end in 7 days and we achieved it. It will be very sad when it ends, but this is football.” made his assessment.
Underlining that they analyzed Türkiye very well, the Argentinian coach said, “We knew how we could win against Türkiye and we won. Turkey had much more ball possession, they had much more chances to score. You can say whether the result was fair or not, the opponent team could not use its numerical advantage very well. Here, for example, it is not the tactical formation but the spirit of the players. If this match is difficult, the Australian match will be more difficult, we do not have many players. We had to defend the opponent throughout the whole match, but we did this because it took us 16 minutes to reach the World Cup.” “It took a year. A triangle formed between Hakan Çalhanoğlu, Arda and İsmail, we broke it, we didn’t want to leave Kenan Yıldız alone. We defended the area where Yıldız was located, and we always kept him under protection when he tried to pass the ball to Arda.” he said.
Alfaro said, “When you think Paraguay’s job is over, you should be afraid of Paraguay.” He said, “It was one of the best days I’ve had as a coach. It’s not me who should be thanked, it’s my players. We regained the belief in ourselves. We came here to write history, we have to fight with all kinds of emotions to make the history we will write beautiful enough. As for the referee, it is not easy to manage these matches, new rules are put into effect. Sometimes, I think that under some conditions the result can be one way or another. Everything is always very clear.” “It may not be the case. All the rules of the game also applied to Paraguay.” He made a statement.