Soria: Respect not enough

Bolivia coach Mauricio Soria wants his team to do more than just gain respect after their win over Ecuador at the Copa America.

A three-goal first half set up a 3-2 victory for Bolivia in Valparaiso, with Ronald Raldes, Martin Smedberg-Dalence and Marcelo Moreno netting.

The win was a huge boost to Bolivia’s chances of advancing from Group A, sitting on four points alongside Chile and ahead of Mexico (2) and Ecuador (0).

Soria said there was still a lot of work to do for Bolivia to achieve everything he wants them to.

“We think to gain respect is something very good, but it is not enough,” he said.

“We have to carry on working in order to have recognition due to the football style we want to implement in the whole country.

“We want to implement a work method as well together with all club’s managers in Bolivia.

“We want to improve the quality of work of our players. We want to lift our intensity in order to improve our players’ understanding to do it better.”

Bolivia face hosts Chile in their final group game, looking to advance beyond the group stages for the first time since 1997.

Soria said his team’s performances meant they would find it tougher as the tournament goes on.

“Our opponents now can analyse how we play and the qualities we’ve got,” he said.

“So our rivals can make some amendments to take the advantage. We see a very difficult Chile game, but we’ll try.

“Right now the most important thing for us is to recover the squad as they had such a hard game today.”