Colombia coach faces challenging task: beating Argentina, his home country and former team

MIAMI — Two Argentinians will be coaching in Sunday's Copa América final.

On one side, there's Lionel Scaloni – the 46-year-old unflappable Argentina manager who once played for his national team and has more recently led La Albiceleste to two major tournament championships at the 2021 Copa América and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

On the other side, there's Néstor Lorenzo — a 58-year-old tactician who once played for Argentina alongside Diego Maradona. Now, he's Colombia's head coach.

While it may seem like facing your former team and home country could set off conflicting feelings, Lorenzo is focused. He wants to do something that hasn't been done in more than 20 years, which is to bring the Copa América trophy back to Colombia. 

Even if that means going through Argentina to do it.

"Of course, I love and have worked for Argentina, but I spent seven years with Jose [Pekerman] in this beautiful national team in this beautiful country," Lorenzo said via interpretation on Saturday afternoon. "I have plenty of Colombian friends. I've learned to feel many things as a Colombian. This is a dream come true – every day working to make Colombian football grow and get to the highest possible level. 

"We separate our homeland from football and have objectives and dreams. They're our brothers. They're dreaming along with us. And we are fully committed to this path."

Lorenzo briefly served as an assistant for Argentina (he actually coached Scaloni), but has spent much of his career in Colombia. He was the top assistant for Pekerman, a former Colombian manager, during the 2014 and 2018 World Cup cycles. Then in June 2022, he became the boss, succeeding Reinaldo Rueda after Los Cafeteros failed to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar.

Since Lorenzo has been in charge, Colombia has not lost a match. This squad enters Sunday's final against defending champions Argentina (8 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app) on a remarkable 28-game unbeaten streak, which includes impressive victories over Spain, Germany, the United States and Brazil. Los Cafeteros managed to defeat Uruguay in the Copa América semifinal last week while playing the second half with only 10 men after Daniel Munoz was sent off with a red card for elbowing a Uruguayan player just before halftime.

[RELATED: What's fueling Colombia's dominant Copa América run, and can they upset Argentina?]

When it comes to La Albiceleste, Lorenzo joked that it will take everything Colombia has to win "and then multiply it." But he followed that up by explaining that what differentiates his side from Argentina's is that while their opponent is on the cusp of clinching its third straight major tournament title, his squad has "all the ambition."

"We're highly motivated," Lorenzo said. "We are hopeful we'll be able to make history. We know how hard it is, we know who our opponent is. But we need to be motivated and we know it's a different match. It's a match that prevails over everything we've done [previously]. We have the opportunity to compete against the world champions. 

"I believe this team is still growing. Every day we set out to overcome an obstacle, because that's what growing is all about. We've had many matches with difficult situations that have forced us to reinvent ourselves and the team has responded to that. We have a good team and I think there's still room for improvement. We hope we'll be able to have a great performance tomorrow and take another step forward."  

Until recently, and certainly before Lorenzo took over, Colombia was more of an afterthought in South America when compared to the likes of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. It won one Copa América title in 2001 and missed out on the last World Cup just two years ago.

But Lorenzo has a quality team anchored by talents like São Paulo midfielder James Rodriguez, who has six assists in this tournament so far, and Liverpool winger Luis Diaz. 

"It would be a very important accomplishment [to win Copa America]," Lorenzo said. "We have short-, mid- and long-term objectives here. When I signed my contract, the objective was to make it to the World Cup. Now, we've made it to a final. It would be beautiful to win, but only God knows."

Argentina is the No. 1 team in the world, per FIFA rankings, and expects to be celebrating on the podium in Miami on Sunday night. Speaking ahead of the final on Saturday, though, Lorenzo said he doesn't want fans to be surprised to see Colombia in a final anymore "because we're among the best."

And beating the defending champs would certainly solidify that. 

Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of "Strong Like a Woman," published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her on Twitter @LakenLitman.