Costa Rica will open their Gold Cup campaign on Monday when they host Guadeloupe at Exploria Stadium in Orlando.
Los Ticos are winless in their last six internationals, including a 4-0 loss to the USA in a friendly last month, while the Gwada Boys won a thrilling penalty shootout over Guatemala 10-9 on Tuesday to advance to the group stage of this competition.
Match preview
It appears that father time may have caught up with the Costa Ricans in recent years, and there does not seem to be a lot of new faces in the squad who are capable of taking over.
After making the quarter-finals at the 2014 FIFA World Cup, this team were seeded as high as 15th in the world in between February and March 2015, but today, they have dropped to number 50.
They come into this tournament without a win in their last six fixtures, including back-to-back shootout losses in the semi-finals and the third-place match at the CONCACAF Nations League.
With the appointment of Luis Fernando Suarez as manager at the end of June, the new coach will try to bring back the belief in this team, who have won only one of their last 10 matches against teams in CONCACAF.
Suarez has tons of international coaching experience, guiding Ecuador to the knockout stage at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and he will attempt to turn back the clock for this veteran squad who last won this tournament in 1989, when it was called the CONCACAF Championship.
While their experience has not been much of an asset to them over the past few years, they have shown a level of consistency in this competition, making it to at least the last eight on six successive occasions.
There may be no bigger emotional high in football than winning in a penalty shootout, and the Guadeloupeans won in the most dramatic of fashions, with Dimitri Cavare scoring the first and last penalty kicks for his side in a match that ended 1-1 after normal time.
Unlike their first opponents in this tournament, the Gwada Boys will not only be feeling good psychologically, but they are also playing some good football at the moment, winning their last six fixtures and scoring 23 goals in that span.
This will mark their first appearance at this competition since 2011, when they failed to make it out of the group stage, losing all three of their games by a single goal.
Their manager and former French international Jocelyn Angloma has chosen a very inexperienced squad internationally, with only three players on their 23-man roster having earned at least 10 caps for the national team.
They might not be the most experienced squad out there, but neither was the team that made their inaugural appearance at this tournament in 2007, and that team shocked everyone by making it into the knockout stage before defeating Honduras in the quarter-finals and then narrowly losing 1-0 to Mexico in the semi-finals.
Fourteen years on from that fairy tale story, they will try to recapture lightning in a bottle once again in 2021.
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Team News
Costa Rica will be hoping their veteran strikers can come into goalscoring form, especially 35-year-old Bryan Ruiz, who is looking for his first international goal since 2019, which, if he can score on Monday, would put him into a tie with Juan Ulloa for fourth all-time at 27.
Joel Campbell has started to feature a lot more recently for Los Ticos, and he needs just one more appearance to reach the century mark for his country, while veteran midfielder Celso Borges has earned 134 caps for Costa Rica and needs just four more to pass Walter Centeno for the most all-time.
Borges will be complimented in midfield by the youthfulness and creativity of Allan Cruz, with the FC Cincinnati player starting to take on some increased responsibility on the field, while this team will have to make do without Paris Saint-Germain goalkeeper Keylor Navas, who was not a part of the 23-man squad.
On their current six-game winning streak, the Guadeloupeans have shown that they can be clinical in front of goal, with striker Matthias Phaeton in good form of late scoring in his side's last two games, while Raphael Mirval has eight goals for his country and needs just one more to move beyond Gregory Gendrey and into sole possession of fourth all-time.
Goalkeeper Yohann Thuram was the hero for Guadeloupe in their marathon penalty shootout on Tuesday, as the cousin of France legend Lilian Thuram saved one shot and scored in sudden death, enabling his team to come out on top.
Striker Dimitri Ramothe sat out of his team's two qualifiers to get into this tournament, but he did notch a brace in his last appearance, a 10-0 thumping of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Costa Rica possible starting lineup:
Moreira; Oviedo, Calvo, Gonzalez, Waston, Fuller; Lassiter, Ruiz, Cruz; Campbell, Ortiz
Guadeloupe possible starting lineup:
Thuram; Alphonse, Baron, Hauteville, Pineau; Cavare, Malpon, Saint-Maximin; Mirval, Ramothe, Phaeton
We say: Costa Rica 1-1 Guadeloupe
The Costa Ricans are used to the hype and pressure of international competition by now, but their team is old, and many of them may be past their prime, while also struggling to beat even the weaker nations in CONCACAF.
Having to play a match so soon after such an emotional win can have its downfalls, and Guadeloupe could find it challenging to maintain such a high energy for 90 minutes.
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