Arturo Vidal says Chile have everything in place to win trophies for the next 10 years – and the Bayern Munich star wants to be at the heart of it.
The 30-year-old has played an integral role in Chile s triumphs at the 2015 Copa America and the Centenario tournament a year later, with Juan Antonio Pizzi s side having climbed to fourth in the latest FIFA world rankings.
Vidal believes La Roja have the quality to win the Confederations Cup in Russia and challenge for next year s World Cup as part of a decade-long period of dominance in international football.
Speaking ahead of Thursday s meeting with Germany in Kazan, he told a news conference: I m very happy about what s been said about myself and the national team. We ve won two competitions that were quite good in South America.
I don t know if it s the best moment in my career but I hope to keep improving.
I hope I can play for many years to come but right now we can achieve a lot. We can win this tournament, fight for the World Cup and we have the Copa America.
We have good players and a good coach. We have everything we need to keep winning. I hope I can do so for many years to come, at least until I m 40!
Vidal was part of the side that were beaten 1-0 by Germany in a friendly match in Stuttgart in March 2014 and the former Juventus man feels that was a key moment in Chile s recent development.
I think the team is more mature, he said. We played against Germany before in 2014 in Stuttgart and we showed that we wanted to achieve big things. They won 1-0 but they had a very good impression of what we could do.
That was a turning point. We started believing in ourselves, we did well in Brazil [at the World Cup] and we won two Copas. We re quite aggressive and we play strongly against every team.
Every single national-team game is important for me. I like to give my best in every game. This tournament is very important for us, it s a dream to be here and it would be a real dream to win it.
We re quite similar, we re both very fast, we press a lot. It ll be a great game. It s a little strange to play Germany after playing there for two years but I m really happy to have this opportunity.
