Thanks brother, I usually focus on Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay but didn’t start following Ecuador until last year, when IDV (Caicedo’s club) appointed Miguel Angel Ramirez as head coach. He was of interest to me because he spent quite a few years at Qatar’s Aspire Academy, which is one of the best sports institutions here in our neck of the woods. He was part of the very successful Spanish contingent of coaches at the Academy, one of which was Felix Sanchez who ended up winning the Asian Cup with the Qatar NT, playing very attractive football with domestic youngsters and destroying the bigger Asian national teams on the way (Saudi, Korea, Japan) and they also spanked us 4-0 in our own backyard. Ramirez actually worked with Sanchez for a few years before that as both were involved in coaching Qatar’s youth teams.
IDV is a very small club in Ecuador that does not even have a permanent home stadium and they are mostly focused on bringing through young players from their youth system. Ramirez got the job there (which is when I started watching them) and ended up winning the Sudamericana (Europa League in South America) last year which was quite a shock for many in SA. They then put up a good fight in this year’s Libertadores and slapped the champions Flamengo 5-0 in the groups (Moises scored and assisted). Dominated Nacional but got knocked out on pens. Coincidentally, Moises was injured during the 2 legs.
In general, he really made his breakthrough earlier this year and Ramirez started to trust him as he became a major part of the side and then the national team. I won’t say he’s 100% going to make it in Europe but you would struggle to find a more talented youngster on that continent at the moment (Gabriel Veron arguably the only one more talented, Pedro De La Vega/Zaracho/Almada are close but not better).
As I said earlier in the thread, great move because the risk is low and reward potentially very high.