Barring a huge surprise, Alejandro Gomez will never win the Ballon d'Or. On the other hand, in his living room will forever be enthroned a… gold record, obtained in 2017 with the song “Baila como el Papu” in reference to his very particular dance, to celebrate each of his goals. With a lot of humor, the Argentinian was then staged in a clip - shot alongside the Italian comic trio Gli Autogol - with 44 million views on Youtube. And all the profits collected from the sale of this piece were donated to an Italian football school for disabled young people. An incredible story, symbolic of the career, without any other equal, of "El Papu", the nickname of Gomez which would be the diminutive of "Papuchi" meaning "small size" and which would have been given to him by his mother.
It must be said that the native of Buenos Aires is not what we can call a giant. On the contrary, with his 1.65m, he would rather shoot in the same category as his illustrious compatriots Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona. The latter has never been his idol, however, Gomez preferring other Argentinian playmakers such as Pablo Aimar, Juan Roman Riquelme or Sebastian Veron. There again everything but a coincidence for this fan of Independiente, the club in the province of Buenos Aires near which he grew up. Even if he cut his teeth at the Sarandi Arsenal, then at CA San Lorenzo before joining Europe near Catania. Italy, a logical choice for this Italian-Argentinian national who is quick to win in Sicily, in an environment that suits him perfectly.
U20 world champion with Aguero and Di Maria
The famous Dolce Vita. Too much, perhaps, for this player with a technique as fine as his mind. Even if, for six months - in 2011 - under the orders of Diego Simeone, Gomez learned to hurt himself, he the talented dilettante, world champion in U20 with Argentina but whose coach at the time, Hugo Tocalli , said he spent "too much time walking when he didn't have the ball." Which probably explains why some of his partners, like Sergio Aguero or Angel Di Maria, exploded much faster. “El Papu”, for his part, suffered from a certain laziness for a long time, as he recognized years later, with maturity helping.
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The turning point in his career was to be in 2013, when he decided, to everyone's surprise, to join Metalist Kharkiv in Ukraine. A choice guided probably for more financial than sporting considerations, he who was in the sights in particular of Inter Milan and Atlético Madrid of a certain Simeone who wanted to take him back under his orders after their fruitful collaboration in Catania. Except that the Ukrainian adventure quickly turns into disaster, between the exclusion of his club from the Champions League due to his involvement in a match-fixing scandal in 2008 and the start of the Donbass war which pushes him to leave the territory in May 2014. “I couldn't stay there,” he recalls. Every time I went outside, I saw people walking around with machine guns in the street. I couldn't put my family's life in danger. ” This armed conflict will, paradoxically, play the role of detonator.
With Gasperini, Gomez found the ideal trainer
Back in Serie A, Gomez signs at Atalanta Bergamo. But for two seasons, "El Papu" is only the shadow of the player who seduced Sicily in the early 2010. A man was then going to put him back on the right track, that of performance: Gian Piero Gasperini. Appointed coach of “the Dea” in 2016, the Italian technician gave the keys to the “Bergamesque” truck to the Argentinean, placing him, with maximum freedom, behind the striker. It did not take more for Gomez, who was then approaching thirties, does not find a second youth and relaunch a career that was starting to get stuck badly. In the 2016-2017 financial year, he scored 16 goals, before specializing in a distributor role in which he excelled - 16 assists - during the Serie A season which has just ended.
Real master at playing Atalanta, Gomez will undoubtedly be one of the main dangers for Paris SG in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Especially since the Argentinian seems in good shape in view of his title of player of the month of June in Serie A, during which he delivered four caviar to his teammates and allowed his club to line up three victories. Likewise, La Gazzetta dello Sport placed him 4th among the best players of the season, behind the trio Paulo Dybala-Ciro Immobile-Cristiano Ronaldo. Excuse the little. And it now seems far away from the dilettante player who landed in Italy ten years ago. At 32, Gomez has reached full maturity. Physically and mentally he has toughened up over time, and he's no longer content to walk when the ball is far from his feet. He behaves like a true captain of a formation in his image, free and very offensive. Hence this strong tribute from Gasperini, which sums it all up: “Papu is extraordinary. He always responds, he never gives up. He knows how to interpret matches. He is a universal player, who gives balance. He is the emblem of this team, by his quality and by his application. He plays for the team, where he is needed and where he is useful. He embodies the spirit of Atalanta. He is an adopted Bergamasque. ”
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