Colombia vs. Bolivia or the most ineffective vs. the most scored

 El combinado nacional es el más goleado de la actual Eliminatoria con 35 goles en contra. El equipo de Farías ya está eliminado, el de Rueda se aferra aún a las matemáticas.

The team that "doesn't even score a goal against the rainbow" and the worst-scoring team in the current qualifiers will meet on Thursday (19:30) in Barraquilla. Colombia has gone seven consecutive matches without scoring a goal in the qualifiers and Bolivia is, at the moment, the highest-scoring team in the competition, with 35 goals conceded.

The harsh phrase in quotation marks at the beginning of the article comes from Carlos Alberto Valderrama, the legendary former player of the Colombian national team, who did not mince his words in criticizing his team's lack of goals, which has them on the verge of elimination from the World Cup.

Despite their poor performance, the Colombians are still clinging to a miracle to be present at the World Cup at the end of the year, but to do so they must score in their last two matches against Bolivia and Venezuela.

The 646 minutes without scoring began in the 3-1 win over Chile on September 9, 2021. Luis Díaz scored the goal 29 minutes into the second half and it was the last time the Cafetaleros embraced to celebrate.

After the match against the trans-Andeans, Colombia failed to score in seven consecutive games: against Uruguay, Brazil (twice), Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina.

The harsh reality

In the last few hours, the Colombian press released another piece of information regarding the scoring droughts of national teams in the world and Colombia is the third in the "shameful" list together with Paraguay, since they have not scored since last year. They are only surpassed by Anguilla of Concacaf (12 matches without scoring-2004) and Seychelles of the African confederation, also with seven strikes in 2008.

"All the scorers have come and we are not able to score a goal, we haven't scored a goal in seven games. You have to recognize when you play badly, which is what happens in the national team, but they get pissed off when you give an opinion. We don't even score a goal against the rainbow," Valderrama stressed.

With only 17 points obtained in 16 games played, Colombia will have the obligation to win on Thursday against Bolivia and on the 29th against Venezuela as visitors, hoping that Chile, Peru and Uruguay do not have 24 points or more.

Bolivia, the worst scorer

A couple of weeks ago, the technical director of the Bolivian national team, César Farías, highlighted in his report on his cycle in the Bolivian national team (2019-2022) that "Bolivia has scored 23 goals in 16 dates of the qualifiers, the same amount as Argentina and the highest number of goals in the last seven qualifiers".

What Farías forgot to include in his 80-page document is that in the current competition, La Verde has conceded 35 goals, has the most goals scored among the 10 teams of the continent and if in these two remaining dates to close the road to Qatar it concedes more than three goals, it will be the Bolivian team with the most goals scored since the qualifiers were played in the system all against all (1998). In competitions that had 18 matches, like the current one, Bolivia has three editions in which it conceded more than 35 goals: for the qualifiers for the World Cup in Germany (2006) its goal was beaten 37 times, for South Africa 2010 it conceded 36 goals and the one that endured more goals was Russia 2018 with 38 goals. Will Colombia be able to break its goal drought against Bolivia, which is the highest-scoring team in the current qualifiers for the World Cup in Qatar 2022?