Paulo Wanchope Returns to Costa Rica Soccer

Written by Thomas

Paulo Wanchope, one of Costa Rica’s most beloved stars, has returned to the Costa Rica soccer scene one more time, but this time he has taken up an off field role as head coach of boyhood team CS Herediano.Paulo Wanchope originally started his career for the team that plays in red and yellow back in 1994 before finally ending his career with them in a competitive league match earlier this year where the game was more focused on his retirement rather than the match’s league significance.

Wanchope returns as Herediano’s head coach after Javier Delgado was sacked on Monday due to Herediano’s recent run of poor results coupled with their general poor performance all season.

C.S. Herediano is believed to be nearly $700,000 in debt and struggling to stay afloat as the team looks to see out the remainder of this season and build for the next, however it has been rumored that Wanchope himself will donate $1 million of his own money to keep the club afloat and running during the mean time. Wanchope himself has yet to admit this however.

After his career started to take off with Herediano, Wanchope started to attract the interest of a number of teams across the globe and soon found himself playing against some of the world’s greatest players in the English Premier League for Derby County. On his debut against Manchester United Wanchope scored perhaps one of his most memorable goals as he took on 6 United players before scoring past the United keeper to lead Derby to a 3-0 win over United away from home.

His career later took him to West Ham and Manchester City where he featured for both teams in the Premier League again as well as the English First Division. Lack of playing at Manchester City due to injury spurred him to move on again and this time it was new pastures as he joined the Spanish side Malaga where he scored one of the goals of the season against Numancia.

After one season Wanchope then moved to Qatar where he played a minimal amount of a games before returning home to play for Herediano. After a playing games back in Costa Rica he then played for Rosario Central, FC Tokyo and Chicago Fire before officially retiring from the professional game seeing out his career by playing testimonial games for Costa Rica and Herediano.

Wanchope has also featured prominently for his nation representing Costa Rica 76 times and scoring 45 goals to become Costa Rica’s second all time top goalscorer as well as representing Costa Rica at 2 World Cups.

As Wanchope’s first job in soccer it will be interesting to see how he fairs with a side that has massively under performed, failing to produce results against the big sides (La Liga and Saprissa) as well as failing to pick up points against sides further down the table.

The current season is almost coming to an end which gives Wanchope a few games to assess his squad and decide who shall stay and who shall go this coming season break. Wanchope will undoubtedly want to add to his squad and bring in some fresh faces too, and being the Costa Rican hero he is this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

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