Well, for the first time in 36 years Peru made it to the world cup. I watched the game with my family, all of us resplendent in our white shirts with the red sash that has been called the greatest World Cup uniform in the history of the world. We were all psyched, because not only is Peru in the World Cup, they’re a really good team. Only a month ago, their best player, Paolo Guerrero, was reinstated after a kind of BS positive drug test that happened over a year ago. Yeah, I know, every player that tests positive claims it was tea or cough medicine, but it’s not like he tested positive for steroids or EPO.

Let me take a minute and put into context what the return of Guerrero meant. Guerrero is the nation’s all time top goal scorer with 34 goals and is the best Peruvian player of his generation. He’s not quite in the absolute top flight of players, but he’s dang good. To put it in the context of the NFL, he’s like having a QB the quality of Philip Rivers. Just think about that for a minute. Rivers is the kind of QB you draft in round 10 in your fantasy league, but if he gets hot, it’s not inconceivable that you could win a title with him. Imagine San Diego without Philip Rivers—they aren’t winning anything. Now, imagine them with Rivers—now you’ve got a team that, if it slips into the playoffs and Rivers gets hot, it’s not completely beyond the realm of possibility that they could win it all. It’s not likely, but at the same time you sit and say to yourself, “Yeah, if Rivers is playing well…I could see that.”

That’s where Peru was with Guerrero back in the line up. They’re still a super dark horse, but if Guerrero got hot, this team could cause problems. With these great players, when the pressure gets turned up, they start rising to the occasion. Guerrero is that type of player. That’s why you want to see a guy like that at the World Cup, that same pressure doesn’t exist elsewhere, and these players aren’t able to rise in other instances because you can’t create that scenario in any other competition in the world. The World Cup is the ultimate pressure cooker, and most players wilt and start kicking their penalty kicks fifty yards over the goal. That’s what 99.9 percent of the population does, there’s no shame there, but when you get that .1% player, that guy plays better on the World stage than he has anywhere else in his life…then you’ve got something special.

This is the whole POINT of the World Cup.

So here we are, sitting around in our Peru jerseys, watching the national anthem play, getting all jacked up to see what Guerrero can do, and, lo and behold, Guerrero is sitting on the BENCH! WTF?

Now, 24 hours later as I write this, I’m finally getting angry, but at the time I was like, “Okay, maybe that’s smart, maybe he’ll come in and blow it up during the second half when everybody’s tired…okay, I can go with this.”

But nope, the second half came around and Guerrero was still on the bench. Then Denmark scored a goal, and Peru DESPERATELY needed the spark having their heroic player on the field would bring, but nope, the coach kept him on the bench. Then finally, with about 25 minutes left to play, Guerrero finally is trotted out only to create two very solid shots that, with just a molecule of more luck, could have tied the game or produced victory. Who knows what might have happened if he’d played the whole game? Even the commentators were saying that.

What I never get is how apologetic analysts get in these type of situations, they pooh and babble and try to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why a coach would leave the best player of his generation on the bench for the most important game for a nation in the last 50 years. Everybody assumes that because a guy is a coach of a World Cup team, he must know what he’s doing. But that’s a stupid thing to think, especially when that coach does something colossally dumb like leave his best player out of the game just to be cute.

I remember being equally furious about 10 years ago when the US ski federation failed to send Caitlin Compton Gregg to the Olympics despite the fact that she was national champion in about 6 disciplines. I remember mentioning this to a friend of mine who said, “Oh, BS, they send the people most likely to win them medals.” But he shut up when I mentioned she was the reigning national champion. What utter infuriating stupidity!

The ego of these coaches blows my mind. Why are they so untouchable? They should be burning this guy in effigy in the streets of Lima. How does a guy like that not know that Guerrero is the guy on the roster who will be hardened by the pressure of the World Cup? I don’t care if he has other excuses. I don’t care if Guerrero is 50 pounds overweight. I remember watching Charles Woodson play in a Super Bowl with a broken collarbone (he only got a way with two plays because the coaches figured it out, but that tough sonnavabyach wasn’t coming out unless they dragged him off the field).

When your team gets behind in the NFL, you put in Philip Rivers and you tell him to start lobbing it to the end zone in reckless, ridiculous, beautiful desperation. I hope somebody gives the Peruvian coach a closed hand slap across the face and tells him, “Put in Guerrero and tell him to produce some shots on goal.” UNLEASH THAT MOFO! The pressure has been turned up now, the only thing that defeats Peru at this point is keeping Guerrero on the bench. When the opposing coach applauds your decision, you’ve made the wrong one…IMBECILE!