Sports journalist Juan Carlos Solano has gone above and beyond his colleagues and has set himself up as a football academic to be able to analyze and present a better product to the fans.
Solano has a sports analysis program called Smart Futbol, which is broadcast on TD+1 and TD+2, with no set schedule.
Solano is a football storyteller, has all coaching licenses granted by Fedefútbol, and a Tactical Analyst course he took with Barcelona in Spain. He is a journalist who graduated from Universidad Latina and majored in the sports that Tico is interested in.
What does your program consist of?
– It is a television space for football analysis in which you reflect on everything involved in this sport: physical, technical, tactical and psychological.
– How did the idea come to you?
It is my dream to study football. One day I said to myself, “The fist, I’m a football journalist, it’s my forte, how much do I know?” Whenever I watched a game, I would ask myself, “Why did he make such and such a move? What was this coach trying to do with this constant play?” I wanted deeper answers and that’s why I had to have the tools.
– What happened?
– I went to study to be a football coach. In 2018, I started getting licenses (contains all licenses given by Fedefutbol) and with that knowledge I wanted to do something different for a fan, that had never been done before, what do coaching staff, assistants, psychological and medical coaches do? Studying opened another angle for me, I saw football differently and then I took the Tactical Analyst course with FC Barcelona. I’m honest, it’s one of the most important courses I’ve had, complete, good.
“I made the decision to break out of the mold where many sports journalists are categorized because I wanted to do things differently,”
– Juan Carlos Solano.
– And all that, how did I help you?
– When I got to TD+ I did it as a storyteller, but then they gave me the opportunity to program from November to here and of course the reports helped me. I had Eric Rodriguez, Douglas Sequeira, Paulo Wanchope and others as guests.
[ Periodista Juan Carlos Solano es el cumiche de la narración de Mario McGregor ]
If you don’t have guests, how are you?
– Since I have the licenses and the knowledge, I explain the plays, for example, for the matches against Canada, USA and El Salvador, I did the analyzes and what I said about Canada made me very happy, and you could get hurt by playing in the air, I showed videos and discussions and the goal of Costa Rica was a header , by Celso Borges. I was right, people on TV watch it quickly, but to get a two-minute segment on TV I have to watch up to three matches and disarm the game.
– How do you see the choice?
– He has many possibilities for advancement because there are experienced players. Some will say New Zealand has more teeth in these types of games, in the qualifiers, but our team faced the Concacaf Games, and many have played matches in the European leagues with a degree of pressure equivalent to this type of game. This means that we have players with more experience in similar scenarios. I give an 80-20 chance to advance.
If you had to say in an international forum what our football looks like, what would you say?
Football in Costa Rica is developing, but slowly because of the infrastructure in which it operates. There are good players, and some colleagues have told me that they like the Costa Rican footballer because he is a coach and this does not happen in all countries. It’s also slow because of the coaches who are responsible for getting these players as an end product and they don’t, so the top coaches go back to teaching the concepts.
–You tell women’s football, do you see stubborn lionesses?
– He has everything to be a three-time champion, I don’t see any competitor. The matches that are drawn are because they stopped doing things and because of the goals they stopped scoring. It generates a lot of opportunities. Mia Corbin, for example, failed a lot, and that wasn’t the case with Jenny Laquipe.
Who is Juan Carlos Solano?
A 34-year-old sports journalist from Dulce Nombre de Cartago, with a 16-year career, I jumped on Radio Cartago after school, but spent most of my career in Colombia. I love sports, I do cycling, athletics, I go to the gym, I swim, I love reading about football, other sports, motivational literature and self-improvement and technology in football. I love that.
