The Ecuadorian media ripped Jose Cifuentes to shreds after the Rangers midfielder struggled to make an impression in Ecuador’s victory over Bolivia on Thursday night.
During Ecuador’s 2026 World Cup qualifying match in La Paz, Cifuentes, 24, was sent off after 55 minutes. His teammates went on to win the match 2-1 with a goal from Kevin Rodriguez in the sixth minute of stoppage time.
The midfielder joined Ibrox from LAFC in the summer, and it’s fair to say that he hasn’t exactly gotten off to a fast start. It also appears that his bad form has carried over to his international games.
Rogelio Arosemena, a panelist on Radio Diblu, attacked Cifuentes on Twitter.
José Cifuentes needs to be portrayed as a more practical tool, he added.
He “does the bare minimum, doesn’t take chances, and doesn’t transcend.
It is lacking in dynamism, creation, and explosiveness.
Journalist Kevin Verdezoto of Radio Diblu said that Cifuentes had “no influence” and that his possibilities with Ecuador were “running out due to poor performance”.
The midfielder for Rangers was not well received by AG Deportes radio host Sidney Galarza, who tweeted: “Jordy Caicedo and José Cifuentes [were] the lowest performers in La Paz.”The ex-LAFC player received a 5/10 match rating from newspaper Primacias, which stated: “He was asked to encourage the circulation of the ball, but he produced too many impacts and was not the partner that Moisés [Caicedo] needed. His exit at the 55-yard mark gave the sense that he had exhausted all of his chances to establish his merit as a starter.
Not good
Cifuentes has undergone a significant change.
He was used to playing for LAFC and Ecuador, where there wasn’t much of a time difference, but now he had to fly from Glasgow to Quito more than 5,600 miles away during international holidays.
The South American country, which has strong ambitions of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, is six hours ahead of the UK in terms of time zone, so the midfielder will also need to adjust to that time difference.
Cifuentes is a victim of Michael Beale’s disastrous summer campaign and the season’s disastrous start.
Undoubtedly, there is a player there; it has just not been found yet.
Can he perform as well as he did at LAFC under a new manager?
We’ll have to wait and see since Cifuentes will undoubtedly discover the hard way that there is a significant difference between football played in the Scottish Premiership and that played in Major League Soccer.
