SAN JOSE, Costa Rica.- Many players in Concacaf’s 60-year history have given everything but have never lifted a trophy in the region. Ruiz, on the other hand, has bookended his career with a pair, winning the 2004 Concacaf Champions Cup with Liga Deportiva Alajuelense and earning the 2020 Concacaf League crown in his return to the club after a long, successful career playing for the Costa Rica national team and in Europe.
“I think it’s different when you’re young and when you don’t have experience,” Ruiz told Concacaf.com this week. “Now, on the other side, you try to tell the young guys what it means to play these types of matches. It’s a very different role. I had the chance to experience a lot of things and play in a lot of tournaments in Europe, World Cups, in Concacaf.”
Ruiz, the 2016 Concacaf Men’s Player of the Year, isn’t done yet, either. He leads a veteran core hoping to push Los Ticos to a third consecutive FIFA World Cup berth. Doing that will mean getting through a difficult octagonal round, set to begin in the fall, with the competition on the field always enhanced by difficult places to play. For an experienced player like Ruiz, though, that only serves as added motivation.
“The away matches in World Cup qualification are spectacular,” he said. “Obviously the stadiums are always full and have an atmosphere that’s totally against you.
“For me, I like to play in those types of situations. I think it can motivate you because with experience you learn that the fans can’t come on the field and do anything, so you can try to use the atmosphere in the stadium against the home team. Atmospheres like the Azteca, with a full stadium, with 105,000 people screaming, you practically can’t hear anything. Sometimes you try to say something to another player on the field and all you can hear is the noise that stadium provokes. It’s a beautiful stadium.”
No matter whether or not the team is able to cope with the challenges of Concacaf qualification, it will be difficult to surpass the achievements of Brazil 2014, when Ruiz and his teammates were able to make the World Cup quarterfinals. Ruiz said his goal against Italy in the 44th minute of Costa Rica’s second group match, named Concacaf’s Goal of the Year in 2014, stands out in his mind as the best ever. It almost, didn’t happen, though.
In the heat of Recife, Ruiz was looking forward to the halftime break and frustrated a penalty hadn’t been given a minute before. With the ball recycled, Ruiz and midfielder Celso Borges started to retreat when Cristian Bolaños found Junior Diaz on the wing.
“Because of tiredness and a bit of the heat, I had some doubts about going to the area, but when I saw Celso was going to the near post, I had the motivation to get to the back post, so I made the run,” he said. “Junior crosses and I saw it like that animated series Súper Campeones, that the ball came to me in slow motion. A, a lot of time passed before it got to the where I was, so I felt like it went directly to mye head and I just tried to place the ball over [Italy GK Gianluigi] Buffon.”
It went just a little too high, kissing the crossbar and coming down, but Ruiz went off to celebrate as the Hawkeye technology utilized at that tournament confirmed the whole ball crossed the line.
Ruiz, Borges, Diaz, Bolaños, goalkeeper Keylor Navas and Joel Campbell and other talents helped Costa Rica get back to the World Cup in 2018 and now they are setting their sights on Qatar. At age 35, though, Ruiz knows this will be something of a “Last Dance” for Costa Rica’s best-ever generation.
“We know, practically, it’s the last World Cup we’ll be able to have as a group. We’ll have to put down our weapons for other players to take the reins and for Costa Rica toand keep doing things well,” he said. “Generational change isn’t easy and this generation, after 2010 when we were eliminated, we stepped up and so far I think we’ve done things well. But we also have to step aside for other players to take that on.”
Ruiz said he plans to retire after the 2022 World Cup, hopefully after another deep run at the tournament. He knows, though, that when he does decide to transition into the next phase of his career, he’ll do so having been lucky enough to leave his mark on Concacaf’s rich 60-year history.
“We experienced very important moments in Concacaf,” Ruiz said. “(The confederation has) grown, and we hope it keeps growing when it comes to tournaments, as an organization and that we compete with all the other competitions on the global level.”
