“I’ve always been a misfit. I have to adapt to wherever I am because no one’s going to adapt to accommodate me.”
There aren’t many footballers that hold citizenship in both Australia and Chile and it’s fair to say there’s a big contrast between the two football cultures.
Yet, Eduardo ‘Marcelo’ Peña has not only been able to use that to make a successful playing career for himself, but he’s also been able to take his experience of playing in three different continents to become a well-established coach.
Furthermore, he’s now looking to put the skills he’s honed over the last decade to make an impact in the country he grew up in.
Peña’s father – also named Eduardo – moved the family out to Sydney after he signed for Blacktown City. From an early age it became apparent that Marcelo had inherited his father’s footballing talent and was soon in the academy of Marconi Stallions. However, it was whilst in South America with the Joeys squad ahead of the 1991 Under-17 World Cup that Peña had his first major break into professional football.
“The Joeys coaches had contacts in the continent and reached out to few of them to notify them that I had a Chilean passport,” Peña tells Kick360. “The idea was that playing in the youth teams in Chile would provide me with a better experience. So I went to Universidad Catolica, and about 18 months later I’d made my first-grade debut.
“I went to Chile again without being able to speak Spanish. They didn’t know what position I should play, and they didn’t even know my real name. I ended up being called Marcelo because people at the club remembered my Dad from when he was playing for them, and they decided I couldn’t have the same name as my Dad so they referred to me by my second name.”
One of Peña’s best achievements came in 1998, when called up to be part of an extended Chilean squad to tour Europe ahead of the upcoming World Cup. He would then make his senior international in a ‘B’ team match against England in Birmingham.
“England put together a team featuring the likes of Paul Merson and Ray Parlour,” Peña tells Kick360. “It was a great experience to play in the match, but to beat them was even better! We always felt looked down upon in South America, so it was good to win.”
Whilst the B team’s achievements were overshadowed by the ‘A’ team beating their hosts 2-1 at Wembley Stadium, courtesy of a Marcelo Salas brace, Peña’s international experience attracted the interest of the prestigious Colo-Colo, with whom he spent a year before moving onto Union Espanola.
“Colo-Colo are probably the biggest club in Chile. I was able to play and felt happy doing it. Now, when you reach a certain age, you find everything you’ve done is bad, or you’ve made the wrong decisions. After 2003, having played two good seasons with Union Espaniola, the following year I didn’t do so well. I fell out with the coach and wanted to leave, but the club didn’t want me to join another a Chilean team, so I had to go to Indonesia.”
After finishing 2004 with Persija Jakarta, a brief return to Chile was followed by a move back to Australia, but this time to Melbourne with Green Gully and shortly afterwards Bentleigh Greens, where Peña would finish his playing career and turn his attention to what he would do after hanging up his boots.
“Bentleigh couldn’t pay as much as I needed to be professional player, but they were able to compensate me by helping me do my coaching badges and coach their under-16s team. I was still only able to play for six months of the year, so I had to find work. My mate Darren McGrath gave me a job as a landscape gardener, and we’d do everything from driveways to decking.”
One particular client of Peña was former Premier League hardman and legendary Socceroo Kevin Muscat, back in Australia to see out the remainder of his playing days with Melbourne Victory. Little did the pair know that the next time their paths would cross, the circumstances could not be more different. But for now, Peña wanted to move forward as a coach, and as luck would have it, an old friend was able to give him a fantastic opportunity.
“I played with Claudio Borghi at Audax Italiano. To play with a guy that won the World Cup was amazing, and there’s no greater experience than to meet a guy like that. We became friends and he gave me my first Spanish book, about a seagull! He knew I was working in football as a coach, and he’d come from a good season at Independiente to Argentinos Juniors and wanted to change his coaching staff. He asked me to go with him and we both just clicked, agreeing on a 3-4-1-2 with an attacking, transitional style of play.”
The shared philosophy proved to be a recipe for success, helping Argentinos to win the Clausura stage of the Primera Division and qualify for the Copa Sudamericana. Such unprecedented success meant that Borghi and his staff were in high demand, and one interested party stood out above all.
“We moved on to Boca Juniors. Their way of living with football is incomparable to anywhere else in the world. They call it ‘El Mundo Boca’, and it’s something you’ve got to live. It’s a different level of stress. If you do a drill, the media will start analysing it for 12 hours, running programmes on it, picking out every mistake. It was very stressful; I think I aged about 10 years!”
The move to Boca also threw up an unlikely opportunity for Peña to briefly return to Australia, as part of the club’s tour of southeast Asia. A friendly against Melbourne Victory brought home just how far Peña had come in his coaching career.
“This just proves how crazy football is. I’m sat in a press conference with Muscat [Victory’s captain] and Claudio, helping to translate for him.
“Kevin turns to me and says: ‘I’m sure I’ve seen you before.’
“‘Yes mate, I’ve done your backyard!’”
Peña’s value as a coach at Boca was far more than just a translator, as he proved after putting forward a raw, 16-year-old academy prospect as someone who could make an impact for the first team.
“I picked out Leo Paredes as a 16-year-old from the youth team, and we gave him his debut against Argentinos, and whilst Claudio told me I was crazy at the time, it worked out and look where he is today: PSG and now Juventus.”
The experience with Boca proved to be a harsh learning curve for Peña, and no single moment better sums it up than the pain Peña felt after suffering a 1-0 defeat at River Plate’s El Monumental in the world-famous Superclásico derby.
“Any instruction you give during the match cannot be heard, so we spent the week working on signs to help communicate with the players on the pitch. For some reason, playing with a back three with Boca never worked, so we had to change to a back four in that game. At half time we had 15 minutes to sort everything out but that was all we could do to help turn the game around, and unfortunately, we couldn’t.
“That derby is the worst moment of your life if you lose. I wish we would have won, but it was still an amazing moment to live in.”
Borghi would later hand in his resignation, and Peña would follow him out the door. The experience of working in Argentina and under Borghi left Peña in good stead to begin forging his own career. He’d also begun to acquire a detailed database of players that he’d come across during his career, following an encounter with legendary coach Cesar Luis Menotti.
Peña met the 1978 World Cup-winning manager at the Avellaneda restaurant in Buenos Aires, where Borghi liked to eat. The restaurant is frequented by some of Argentina’s greatest football personalities, and upon seeing Menotti, Borghi introduced Peña as his assistant.
“He looked me up and down and asked for the name of a specific player from a third division club, and I couldn’t give it to him, and he says to me: ‘You are not Claudio’s assistant; you are only his friend.’
“From that day on, I’d have books where I wrote every player’s name and club that I came across in my career. Menotti would continue to ask about players and if I don’t know their names then I am still just Claudio’s friend, not his assistant. I’ve now got a database of about 30,000 players that I’ve known, faced, or just watched.”
This database of players gave Peña the groundwork he needed for his next job, the first step of his career as a head coach. He arrived at Chilean second division club Rangers de Talca, with a huge task on his hands of preparing the club for their 2011 season.
“I go there as a manager for the first time, and I had to organize everything. All we had were seven footballs, and five contracts, with 22 days to organize coaches, players, and preseason. Picking the players was fundamental. They had to know the division but add something different. We had a striker, Cristian Milla, who scored 34 goals who was able to make a difference.”
The job Peña did to transform the club put them on the path to promotion, despite his departure midway through the season after a disagreement with the club’s chairman. It’s become something of a specialty for Peña, coming into clubs and changing their fortunes, particularly as assistant to Jose Luis Sierra, who he first worked with at Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia. The Jeddah-based club needed a minimum of eight wins from the remaining nine matches to avoid relegation, and amazingly, they managed it, and Peña credits this success to a name familiar to A-League fans.
“We had Aleksander Prijovic and he helped save us. He was going through a difficult period, but we worked with him and took him to another level. I had to work hard on getting him to trust me to help him improve his game. He’s a fantastic player who has got every type of goal. He can turn and shoot, he can run, he can head the ball. He’s got everything and he’s a great player.”
He also had the chance to coach at the Under-17 World Cup with Chile, as the nation hosted the world’s best young prospects.
“To participate in a World Cup for your country is an amazing thing, and so to do it with Chile was fantastic. Those players: we had Ignacio Saavedra [midfielder, Universidad de Catolica and senior-capped international] and Marcelo Allende who went to Arsenal and is now playing in South Africa. We also faced the likes of America’s Cristian Pulisic and Victor Osimhen, who of course led Nigeria to win the tournament.”
Pena finds youth coaching such as he did with the Chilean national team and before that at Universidad de Chile the most rewarding work, and perhaps the most enjoyable.
“Youth football is the only way to make a real difference with players, installing better footballing habits, improving principles for the players and make them open to development and adapting to situations.”
Now though, Peña is back in Sydney, as he hopes to spend more time with his family whilst being able to continue his career. His journey across the world has helped shape his philosophy and he’s confident in his ability to deliver in whatever he tries his hand at.
“I’m open to do anything. I like coaching youth football, but I’d also like to coach first grade. At that level, you need to win, and I know I’m capable of building a squad to do that at any level. Football is about timing and opportunities, and if I get an opportunity, I need to make an impact, and that’s what I’m about.”
