Enner Valencia among 5 of Ecuador's players suspended for indiscipline

Ecuadorian football is in a dark place. Ecuador missed out on the 2018 World Cup and suffered six defeats in six games, Gustavo Quinteros was sacked as manager in the messiest of circumstances, and La Tricolor will plummet in the next edition of the FIFA World Ranking.

But it doesn't end there.

On Thursday, the Federacion Ecuatoriana de Futbol announced a case of indiscipline took place prior to Ecuador's 3-1 defeat to Argentina in 2018 World Cup qualifying. As a result, five players are suspended indefinitely. "In this way the board of the FEF sets a very severe precedent for future call-ups," Ecuadorian football's governing body said in a statement, without revealing names.

The FEF published another statement on Friday in which Enner Valencia, Joao Plata, Gabriel Cortez, Robert Arboleda, and Jhon Cifuente were named as the five players. They were allowed to stay out until 10 p.m. on Friday night, but, without authorisation, returned at 2:45 a.m. on Saturday morning.

As for Jefferson Orejuela, who El Comercio reported as one of the five players, he was stuck in traffic and his delay was therefore justified. He had previously insisted that he wasn't among the suspended footballers, saying: "That's a lie. The highest authority will announce the names, who were the players who had that problem: escaping the concentration."

Ecuador finished eighth in CONMEBOL's 2018 World Cup qualifying, capping off the two-year marathon with a defeat in Chile and a loss to Argentina at the once fortress-like Estadio Olimpico Atahualpa. The campaign marked La Tricolor's worst since the 18-matchday format was introduced in South America for the 1998 World Cup.