One day the phrase was going to be true: John Reynoso es the national team coach. They didn’t get here for free or from a popularity poll – which would lose them almost all-. No. His virtual arrival at Videna has more to do with a career project than a shortcut, more with his proven conditions than those of an agent and more with the objectives achieved than with a godfather. He chose the longest ladder because -he always said in the few notes he gave to El Comercio- he believed in his ability. “Make it happen”, he summarized. He went to Bolognesi and put together a champion team. He accepted the ‘U’ and returned him to the podium, after the dream three-time championship in 2000. He founded the foundations of the best Melgar in history, who today plays in the quarterfinals of a South American Championship. He went to be an assistant in Mexico because he knew that the big opportunity would come later and last year, in that Cruz Azul where he was captain and symbol, he became champion after 23 seasons with the coach diver.
Now he will replace Ricardo Gareca, who is more or less like occupying the space of a father.
For this task, those who know him best explain, he has quietly prepared himself. He has fine-tuned his coaching staff -which is still an army, including physical trainers, assistants and video analysts-, has closely followed Gareca’s work -via Juan Carlos Oblitas- and, most importantly, has listened to the recommendations of his environment closest about not confronting unnecessarily, and defusing bombs rather than lighting them, starting from an idea: he has nothing to prove. Fernanda Reynoso, his daughter, a political scientist from the TEC de Monterrey and a teacher from the University of Essex, United Kingdom, defined it better, in times of Puebla 2020. “You chipped a lot of stone, you went back and forth when you had to. You never stepped on anyone for having your present.
The national team and him, Juan Máximo Reynoso, meet at the right time. Listening to him now in the one-hour conference has been checking it out. He, controversial, who has already chopped all the possible rock. And the national team, the only thing that unites us, to which everything costs twice as much and he begins to walk again with his eternal backpack of stones, towards the top.