Il cambiamento di Guillermo Maripan dopo il cartellino rosso a San Siro: dall’andata al ritorno con l’Inter
“It was my first red card in my career caught this way.” Since that red at San Siro, everything has changed for Guillermo Maripan. Inter-Torino, one of his first games in a granata shirt with the still old three-man system. Expulsion for excessively rough intervention. “It made me realize that I made a bad decision with that intervention. And so I started defending in a different way. I realized that aggressiveness is not synonymous with hitting the rival. A defender must be aggressive, but without necessarily going against the opponent. This is something I did not know, it makes me very happy,” he said a few weeks ago in an interview.
La svolta di Maripan
Since Paolo Vanoli changed Toro’s defense module from three to four, there are no more excuses for the Chilean defender: he has become a real wall. Against the Nerazzurri, it turned out to be the match of many important events for the Granata’s destiny, such as Duvan Zapata’s injury, but certainly, for Maripan, it represented the turning point. Now his status is that of an immovable starter – sanctioned by the game against Bologna in December – a staple in the Granata rearguard, which in the second half of the season has changed pace thanks in part to the Chilean defender’s performance. A silent evolution, built in training after training, that has led him to completely overturn the hierarchies compared to the beginning of the season.
Having arrived in Turin with an important past between Ligue 1 and the Chilean national team, Maripan had struggled to impose himself in his first months in the Granata. In the first half of the season his minutes were reduced, with Vanoli seeming to prefer other solutions for him, more broken-in or deemed more suited to the three-man system. But the constancy, seriousness and, above all, tactical intelligence of the 1994-born center back slowly won over the coach.
“A livello personale io sono molto contento”
Several confrontations with the Granada coach following that famous ejection, which so marked Guillermo’s emotionality. “Vanoli asked me to transfer my experience in the years I played in France, in Spain, in the Chilean national team to younger players. There is a lot of dialogue, day by day. On a personal level I am very happy: I am learning the language, I am adapting to the league perfectly.” Now what we see is a different Maripan, more integrated and, above all, with an extra awareness. The same one he will have on the field on Sunday against Inter.
Guillermo Maripan
