Football in Peru

The Footy Factor team unhooked themselves from their computers last week and enjoyed a well-earned holiday. A working holiday, of course!  (We bet you didn’t even notice we were out of the country.) Our team travelled to the land where Inca ruins dot the landscape, where guinea pig is considered a delicacy, and where Nobby Solano is hailed a hero. That’s right: Peru.

Actually, Nolberto Solano only enjoys second billing over there. Claudio Pizarro – he of Werder Bremen and a brief stint at Chelsea – is top dog. We must have spotted the striker’s face on the cover of the country’s sports tabloid at least half the days we were there. But because of our dodgy Spanish, we couldn’t understand out why – although it looks like an injury has scuttled his latest international comeback.

We started to wonder why Peru has been largely absent from the international scene for so long. (Their last World Cup appearance was in 1982) The passion is certainly there: everywhere we travelled we saw people wearing the shirts of most of the top European clubs. The infrastructure seems to be there, too: there were football pitches set up in the most unusual and unlikely places.

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