Deportes La Serena’s exit from the Copa de Liga group stage has raised questions about the team’s performance, but head coach Felipe Gutiérrez says the tournament was always part of a broader season plan centered on the Primera División. La Serena failed to win any of its six matches in the competition, yet Gutiérrez insisted the cup was never treated as irrelevant. Instead, he said the club had to balance competition with squad management while keeping its main focus on the national league.
Gutiérrez explained that the team’s participation in the Copa de Liga, like the Copa Chile and the Campeonato Nacional, was included in the club’s overall planning. He said the objective from the beginning of the year was to perform well in the top-flight league, and that message had been clear from the first match. The coach noted that La Serena fielded a lineup close to its strongest team in the opening match against Universidad de Chile, but later fixtures forced the staff to make changes because of fixture congestion and travel demands.
One of the main difficulties, according to Gutiérrez, was the short recovery time between matches. He pointed to only 72 hours between games against Audax Italiano and Unión La Calera, along with a run of away matches, as factors that required careful workload management. He also said the defeats to Audax Italiano and Unión La Calera were especially damaging to the club’s hopes of advancing. Against Audax, La Serena fought back after falling two goals behind but still lost, while the late defeat in La Calera made qualification much harder. Those matches also led to injuries that kept important players out for about 21 days, affecting the team’s planning.
Despite the poor results, Gutiérrez believes the competition had some positive value. He said the Copa de Liga gave playing time to squad members who had not been featuring regularly and helped the coaching staff evaluate alternatives for the rest of the season. In that sense, he views the tournament as a useful part of the team’s development process rather than a failure in isolation.
Looking ahead to the second half of the season, the coach said La Serena must finish the first round strongly before focusing on the next stage. He said reaching between 18 and 20 points in the opening half would represent a very good campaign. From there, the goal would be to match or improve that level in the second round. Gutiérrez also said that ending the season with 40 to 45 points could create a realistic chance of qualifying for an international competition, which he described as an important objective for the club and the squad.
