A young man in his early 30s approaches the portal of a neighborhood apartment building.
He wears sportswear and has a faded haircut with a machete side parting.
With his hands on his temples he makes a screen to try to see inside.
At the moment a lady arrives, key in hand and, without greeting, she speaks to him as if he were family: “Lucas, welcome home again, our home.
We are happy, especially those of us who have known you since you were a baby."
Lucas Pérez incorporates the gaze of a child who has been caught spying on his neighbors, oblivious to the fact that today he is probably the most famous man in the city.
He smiles and continues to walk around the place where he grew up.
"What memories," he almost sighs as he takes another look at the portal.
“Here they didn't let us play with the ball.
Immediately a neighbor would come down and scold us.
Monelos is a working-class neighborhood in A Coruña whose backbone is made up of a row of eight 14-story buildings known as the sailors' towers.
Thousands of children born in the 1970s and 1980s grew up there, in a prototypical setting of the time: symmetrical blocks, swarms of kids playing soccer in arcades and open fields, and a lively social life in bars and shops.
And, also, a lot of drugs in the environment: "This plaza used to have special effects," says Pérez as he passes by a place that is now totally changed.
A supermarket with parking, a civic center and a library occupy the lot where the methadone bus was parked, which he remembers seeing while playing with his friends.
Instead of a scree with eternal puddles, today there is a children's playground with a rubber floor.
There are no makeshift goals or hordes of children running after a ball, just as happened in those early nineties.
The one who ran the most, the one who yelled the most, the one who wanted the ball the most was the same one who today is waving here and there.
O Neno de Monelos.
Pérez shows an image of his time as a player in the lower categories at Victoria CF in A Coruña.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
Lucas Pérez (A Coruña, 34 years old) dreamed of being a footballer for his city's team, the one with the white and blue striped shirt that he used to wear since he was little.
Deportivo, a team with a long and winding history, was living its heyday at that time: it was a regular in European competitions;
in 1995 they won their first Copa del Rey and their first Super Cup, and in 2000 they became the ninth league champion —and the last to date— in history.
Those milestones were experienced by Lucas as a child in the Riazor stands, the Dépor stadium.
As if it were a movie, a parable of overcoming, he managed to jump from the stands onto the grass.
Chosen out of a million, the boy from Monelos reached professional soccer.
Although for this he had to overcome unchosen family tribulations, and then learn the darkest paths of the sport,
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48 hours with Lucas Pérez, star of Dépor
He dazzled and played in the Champions League with a great player in the English League -Arsenal-, won titles, returned to Spain -he went through Alavés, Elche and Cádiz- and, at the age of 34, scoring goals in the elite and in top form, He made an unthinkable decision last December: he left everything, million-dollar offers and First Division contracts, to go and fulfill a dream: return to Deportivo.
But not the one who captivated him at the age of falling in love with a soccer boy, but a Dépor that has been going through the mud of the First Federation (third category) for three seasons, hungover from those successes of two decades ago.
"I'm not coming to the third division, I'm coming to Deportivo," he said at his presentation at the beginning of January.
"And I come to help," he repeats to his neighbors more than 20 years later, turned into an idol, in the streets of the neighborhood where he grew up.
***
Lucas Pérez chats with neighbors in Monelos, the neighborhood of A Coruña where he grew up.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
"I couldn't imagine it was going to have such an impact."
News of Lucas Pérez's homecoming unleashed a storm of global football attention, amplified by an extreme coincidence in a sport long since turned into a heartless business: it happened the same week that a Saudi Arabian club announced Cristiano's arrival. Ronaldo for a chip of 200 million euros a year.
Deportivo still has a line of international media waiting to interview the protagonist of the story against modern football.
Two months ago, Pérez was scoring goals in the First Division.
His team, Cádiz, approached him with an offer to extend his contract for two million euros net.
But the player rejected it and met with the president of the Cádiz club, Manuel Vizcaíno, to make an unusual request:
"Let me go to Deportivo."
The request implied giving up (a lot) of money, going down two categories and, on top of that, putting half a million out of the footballer's own pocket to help pay for an unattainable signing for a First Federation team, even though it has trophies in the windows and is backed by Abanca, current owner of the Coruña club.
Vizcaíno ended up accepting.
"How am I going to say no to a player who asks me to go home?" He would explain later.
The Cádiz fans themselves, delighted with the performance of the Coruña striker, understood his desire.
even though he has trophies in the showcases and is backed by Abanca, the current owner of the A Coruña club.
Vizcaíno ended up accepting.
"How am I going to say no to a player who asks me to go home?" He would explain later.
The Cádiz fans themselves, delighted with the performance of the Coruña striker, understood his desire.
even though he has trophies in the showcases and is backed by Abanca, the current owner of the A Coruña club.
Vizcaíno ended up accepting.
"How am I going to say no to a player who asks me to go home?" He would explain later.
The Cádiz fans themselves, delighted with the performance of the Coruña striker, understood his desire.
The best-selling shirt at Deportienda, with the number and name of Lucas Pérez. Daniel Ochoa de Olza
His closest circle did not understand him so much: “How are you going to leave First?”, his representative and close friend, Loren, told him, who tried to reason with him: “You still have a few years left in First.
You will have time to go to Dépor”.
There was no way.
"I bet to return," says Pérez, pulling words from the bowels.
“When I leave the Riazor, I go to my sofa, but to the real sofa in my house.
In the other places where I played, I went to a sofa, yes, but not the one where I grew up.
Where you grow up is special for a lifetime, it is a unique essence”.
In fact, I had been wanting to go home for years.
Even playing for London Arsenal, the pinnacle of his career, he was hammering the head of his manager.
“He wanted to go, he wanted to go.
My Dépor, my Dépor, my Dépor… All day with that.
Always my Dépor”, says Loren.
On December 30, he played his last game with Cádiz.
And he scored the equalizing goal.
Leaving the locker room he met the president.
They didn't say anything, they just hugged each other.
Hours later he was in A Coruña and was presented in a big way.
Some 7,000 people —some say several thousand more— gathered on a weekday to welcome O Neno de Monelos.
He looked like one of those coming-outs of the Brazilian players that the historic president Augusto César Lendoiro brought to the Riazor and who also lived
in situ
Lucas himself as a child, a quarter of a century ago.
“We sat down to eat pipes and dream of being soccer players,” says Pérez as he continues to walk through Monelos.
“That image, and not the money, was the one that haunted me to decide whether to leave the First Division or not.
Remember that and think: what would that eight-year-old boy who dreamed of reaching First Division do if now I tell him that he is leaving him because he wants to?
You talk to yourself and ask yourself: you wanted to score goals for Barça and Madrid, to be in the National Team.
Is it achieved by being in the First RFEF?
No, of course not, that's why it made me wonder.
But I have given up all that to be at peace with myself.
What is my last challenge?
That of all sportsmen, but in my case playing on the field: promotion and return.
The footballer's life is very short and we all want to be remembered.
***
Lucas just became a father for the first time.
And every mention of his newborn son refers to his own life, in which he had to make decisions without adult references since he was a child.
Everything is involuntary comparison with what he did not have.
“I grew up with my grandparents on the father's side, who worked on the high seas, embarked on the
Gran Sol
.
On the maternal side, the family was very unstructured, because of the drug.
My mother was a drug addict and she abandoned me.
I never heard from her again.
She only introduced herself to me once, when I was already at Dépor, but for me my mother really was my grandmother.
She died, like my grandfather, when I was a teenager”, says Pérez, unable to prevent the tears from appearing.
By then, that boy with the competitiveness in his eyes had already started a globetrotting path with football, cooking up a fruitful career full of breaks, just like his own football.
That left-handed and electric striker who stood out in the Victoria club, a classic from A Coruña, and later in the Arteixo youth team, did not, however, attract the attention of the lower categories of Dépor, more inclined to pay for foreign talent.
Instead, Alavés appeared and recruited him for his youth academy.
He took a few months to return to Galicia.
A tough comeback: Pérez was still a youth, but without a home, family or support network, he had to make adult decisions.
The family of his friend Iván welcomed him and gave him a roof while he earned his bread in the modest Órdenes club.
He trained, fought and scored goals on muddy fields with no plan B.
He bet everything on one goal: to become a professional footballer.
"Shark mentality" is defined by Lucas himself.
He and Iván have been united ever since as brothers.
Sports training in Riazor.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
The crack of opportunity was opened by Atlético de Madrid B. Pérez slipped through it and from there he jumped to Rayo Vallecano a year later, where he made his debut in the first team.
One of his companions in that lineup was Lorenzo Román, Loren, now his representative, partner, friend and godfather of his son.
His other brother.
And when Pérez, a boy who was left without anyone before coming of age, says "brother" it means that he is a brother.
“Me, or all or nothing.
For better or for worse I am like that ”, he affirms.
Loren smiles and nods.
Perez is all passion fueled by a lifetime of fighting.
Even the way of talking about him, of expressing himself, is intense, clear, full of feeling.
He flees from set phrases and footballer clichés.
He gets excited, laughs, gesticulates and surrounds everything with an unmistakable Coruña accent, a hallmark of the city's neighborhoods that,
The defaults of the Ruiz-Mateos at Rayo Vallecano pushed him to Ukraine, his first opportunity as a professional, in 2011. A soccer worker.
There he lived surreal situations.
“The president called us to his office every month to pay us with an envelope full of bills.
If he considered that you had not played well, he would take 30% from you.
All with a gun on the table.
There were months that he did not pay us.
I stood up one day and did not go to train.
Curiously, then he called me at dawn and told me to go to his office to collect everything he owed me.
If he didn't do it, he wouldn't see the money anymore.
The footballer, pictured on the Riazor beach.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
Despite everything, in the harsh environment of Karpaty Lviv, Pérez excelled and established himself as a footballer.
That is why the president of the Greek Thessaloniki PAOK came looking for him, and he soon became one of the best players in the League in that country.
In a recurring sequence in his career, they could only keep him for one year because he came knocking on the door of the club of his life: Dépor, then in the First Division.
As a prologue to what would come later, Pérez gave up almost one million euros that PAOK offered him to wear the blue and white for the first time in exchange for 150,000 euros per year.
In A Coruña he played two seasons at a high altitude and kept the team in the elite, which led him to sign for Arsenal, one of the greats of the Premier League, where he won two titles.
"I lived the salvation of Dépor and I won the FA Cup [the most traditional trophy in England], and I can assure you that the salvation of Dépor was much better," he recalls with a serious gesture, making it clear that it is not an exaggeration.
Loren, his representative, completes: “Even then he did not want to leave here.
Arsenal arrived and told me: 'Arrange the way that I can renew, I don't want to leave Coruña.'
But in London they put 20 million.
It was Dépor that told him they needed to sell it”.
He returned to Riazor a season later, 2017-2018, the most bitter of his career in his own home, when he was relegated to Second.
He went to West Ham, then to Alavés and Elche, and finally to Cádiz, but he never fully left: “Since I left Alavés I wanted to go home, but it can't be given and I continue.
But the desire was already there."
Finally, he did it at the age of 34 and without having played as a professional in any category other than the First Division.
He now he went down two steps out of feeling.
Pérez remembers how the president of Cádiz stung him in his pride until the last minute.
“Come back if you have balls', he told me while driving towards A Coruña.
He wanted to hit me in the ego, he knows me well ”.
Fans take pictures of Lucas before a match at the Riazor.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
"Lucas has always been like this, a volcano of feeling that makes him make controversial decisions," says Loren.
Lucas and Loren today have a representation agency and are part of the Kings League organization, along with Piqué and Ibai Llanos, as well as other businesses.
One of them, in the center of A Coruña, is a shoe store that he has just opened with his friend Iván.
Lucas has known how to diversify what football has given him.
He has not missed any of the opportunities he dreamed of as a child, when he did not even have a roof.
His codes of loyalty are those of the street, firm and drenched in emotion.
The codes of someone who defined the most important moments in his life in solitude and now he surrounds himself with friends.
***
"Come on, Peke, your arms are shaking."
The competitiveness emanating from Pérez's torn voice floats even in scenes of leisure and friendship like this: an informal free throw tournament at the basket in his shoe store.
Some youngsters from the city participate, six players from the Dépor squad (among them youth squad Yeremay Hernández,
Peke
, who strives to score) and the owner of the store, who is none other than Lucas Pérez.
His voice echoes between the music from the DJ and the laughter of the kids.
A few weeks ago he arrived at the locker room and seems to already have command of the booth.
"He is a leader in everything," says a club employee.
“Since he arrived we have seen how the youngest members of the team look to him as a reference.
Some have changed habits: now they go to the gym after training when they didn't step foot in it before”.
His magnetism transcends the dressing room, as can be seen on the street.
A Coruña is a place for a walk, and the footballer, who lives in the most central point of the city, is assaulted by young and old wherever he goes, be it the promenade, the Marina or the Plaza de Pontevedra, where the clubhouse.
“The first game we had to take him off the field hidden in another car, like a
beatle
, because there was no way to get out of the people that were there,” another employee comments with a laugh.
Dépor is an atypical case: after three years in the third category playing against Guijuelo, Calahorra or San Fernando, it has almost 25,000 members —10% of the city's population— and an average age each time lower in the fans, which at each game places Riazor among the stadiums with the most attendance of all Spanish divisions.
The soccer player greets a couple on the Riazor promenade.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
The arrival of Pérez has revolutionized the youngest, even if it surprised the footballer himself: "Children come who didn't even see me play in the previous stage, it's incredible."
This is verified as soon as he gets out of the car before the game against Mérida, the fifth since his arrival.
This time he will not increase his goal tally, currently four, but Dépor will win and move into third position, two points behind the lead that grants direct promotion to Second Division.
The game is resolved at the last moment of the discount, thanks to a penalty that they do, precisely, to Peke.
Lucas grabs the ball, but hands it over to Quiles, the other striker on the team in charge of taking the penalties before Lucas's arrival.
Goal, overwhelming celebration in the stands and a roar of joy from Lucas Pérez.
See him celebrate a goal,
Seeing him fight a ball or throw an uncheck is to see his vital reality.
Life did not give him even half a meter.
He doesn't plan to do it either as long as he keeps playing.
Pure competitiveness.
The team wins and so does the club.
Making big numbers, in the entity they believe that at the end of the season the money invested in their signing will have been amortized (half a million euros paid to Cádiz plus a 150,000 euro token), between sponsorships and sale of shirts, a precious asset these days in A Coruña.
There it is also revealed that Deportivo is a special club, with sales higher than many First Division teams.
Before the Mérida game, the plate with the number 7 number and the name of Pérez does its last job of the day at the Deportienda: there are no more shirts available until the new order for the brand that dresses the team arrives.
***
A colloquium of the local media Riazor.org with a full audience is held on Calle Real in A Coruña.
Most of the attendees are children and young people.
At the end of an hour of interview about football, but also about
streamers
and video games —other passions of Lucas—, the usual line of fans arrives for photos, videos and hugs: “Will you sign this paper for me, Lucas?
I'm going to tattoo your autograph”, a teenager surprises him.
To which the footballer replies: "But what are you doing, man, don't get it tattooed, you'll regret it later!"
Pérez plays basketball in his shoe store in A Coruña.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
The personality of Pérez, who at certain times brought controversy in A Coruña after the descent to the Second Division in 2018 (part of the fans blamed him and a graffiti, "Lucas Pérez, go now", even appeared on his house), now charges didactic overtones with the youngest fans.
For those who knew him in earlier times, the 34-year-old Lucas is just as hyperactive as always, but he has a pedagogical spirit that he did not show before, as if he were the reverse of the mirror in which a complicated life is reflected: "When you are a child You are not aware of what your parents or grandparents do for you, which is why it makes me angry to think of them”.
And he gets excited again.
“Soccer is wonderful, for me it has been the university.
Go at 15 to wash your underpants in Vitoria,
or go to Ukraine alone... That's why you have to value those people who work in the lower categories, that bubble that now protects the kids.
Then footballers will come out or not, but they educate the person, that is the most important thing”.
And back to the mirror: “I would tell my son to be happy, to do what he considers pursuing what he likes until the end, because we are going to support him.
Football saved me, but I didn't have a plan B”.
Every story has its end and Lucas Pérez's, in his mind, is only one: promotion with Dépor.
“It is the most important challenge of my life,” he says.
It would be a closure at the height of the whirlwind that has caused his return, and that in Monelos is just an echo of the news that came from him every so often, wherever he was.
Pérez looks at the horizon in the shell that separates the beaches of Riazor and Orzán, in A Coruña.
In his thoughts there is only one idea: to promote with Dépor.
“It is the most important challenge of my life,” he says.
Daniel Ochoa de Olza
On his visit to the neighborhood, shortly before leaving, a retiree approached him with a shopping cart.
With a face of emotion, the woman stops a couple of meters from the player, like someone who stops before an apparition.
-Luke!
Do you know who I am?
I'm Rosa, from tower 6.
—I'm falling for it, you're still as beautiful as ever.
—Honey, score good goals, we have to go up to Primeira!
I hope God hears you.
Lucas says goodbye and takes a few last photos with the children who are left behind.
He walks to the parking lot that now occupies the lot where, as a kid, he watched the methadone van and ran after the ball.
He turns his head one last time and looks at the third floor of the tower where he grew up, who knows if remembering his grandmother who, leaning out of that window, ordered him to put the ball down and go up to dinner.
A neighbor shouts from the other side of the square: "Lucas!"
Words can't seem to come out, so he condenses it all into another shout: “Thank you!”