Jorge Luis Pinto, who has managed a number of teams in Colombia has claimed that Davinson Sanchez does not have the required talent to play for his country.
Sanchez has made a solid start to the season with Tottenham, helping the club keep clean sheets in each of their first three Premier League games.
The 25-year-old’s absence was certainly felt by Nuno Espirito Santo’s men at Selhurst Park on Saturday after they finished the match with Ben Davies and Joe Rodon at centre-back following Eric Dier’s injury and Japhet Tanganga’s red card.
However, Sanchez’s club form did not carry over to the international scene with the defender struggling in Colombia’s draws with Paraguay and Bolivia during the international break.
The former Ajax man came in for scathing criticism from his nation’s media on the back of his performances, with some of his teammates coming to his defence.
Pinto has now become the latest person to pile on to Sanchez as the 68-year-old insisted that the Tottenham man is simply not good enough for the international level.
He told ESPN F90: “Four years ago, I told my son, who loves football, that Davinson is not a centre-back for the Colombia national team.
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“With all the respect that Davinson deserves, he is a healthy, correct, hardworking man and everything, but he doesn’t have the talent, the playing time, all those details that a centre-back needs.
“The time of play, the handling of game intent, the handling of backs, the defensive breakdowns, the shock impact that sometimes you can’t be so aggressive.
“Davinson is an extraordinary human being, as the lads have told me, but he lacks that slow, balanced handling of the play, knowing how to correspond to the line of 4.
“I have said that the line of 4 is a collective system, it is not an individual action, it is a system of 4 and with the midfielders of 6 or 8 players, and Davinson lacks that combination, that collective understanding.”
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Hopefully, the criticism that Sanchez has been getting from the Colombian press has not dented his confidence too much. I wanted to see the 25-year-old sold over the summer after his struggles last season but he was arguably our best player in the first three games of the season. Let’s hope he can continue from where he left off when he returns from Croatia.
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