The unknown history of Juan Guillermo Cuadrado in the Argentine fourth division

Cuadrado faces Nicolás González during the qualifying match between Colombia and Argentina, on June 8. Gabriel Aponte / / Getty Images

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If the matches had promotional posters like the old boxing fights, the semifinal of the Copa América 2021 that Argentina and Colombia will play this Tuesday in Brasilia could be announced as "The revenge of Juan Guillermo Cuadrado." In 2006, when he was 18, the future

crack

of the Colombian national

team and Juventus traveled to Buenos Aires to be

tested in different Argentine teams but was not supported by anyone, even by some amateurs semi El Porvenir, club the fourth category. After several months of trying, disappointed, without money and already rationing meals once a day, the young Cuadrado had to return to Colombia, where his great stint at Deportivo Independiente Medellín between 2008 and 2009 served as a platform to make the leap to Europe.

As he tells in

Panita, this is my story

, his autobiographical book recently published in Colombia –co-authored with the writer Jeins Durán–, Cuadrado tested himself on the two giants of Argentine soccer, River and Boca. In both, however, he received the same evasive response from talent recruiters: "We will let you know." That unknown Colombian also tried other Ascent teams, such as Tiro Federal de Rosario, 300 kilometers from Buenos Aires, and Nueva Chicago, but there was no case. Nobody envisioned him for what he would be: a figure of world football and a face that would illustrate the continent. In these days when the networks that televise the Copa América promote the tournament with the figure of each team, the only Colombian that Argentina's public posters show is Cuadrado,paradoxically the footballer who more than a decade ago bounced from club to club.

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The data only known and reconstructed by direct witnesses is that, in the midst of his determination to play in Argentina, Cuadrado was also in El Porvenir, a club to which, in recent times, fortune has been elusive - he never played in First but bottomed out in the 21st century, in which it fell to the fifth and final division.

“A few years ago I was at my house, watching a European soccer game, and I see that they are targeting a Colombian named Cuadrado.

'But it's the one that was tested in El Porvenir!' I started talking to TV.

I even told my family that I had played with him ”, says Adrián Gerry, a former striker with extensive experience in third and fourth category teams of the Argentine promotion between 1998 and 2010.

"In 2007, El Porvenir was in the Primera C - the fourth division - and the coach, Fabián Nardozza, joined Julián Mosquera, a Colombian striker who had stood out in other clubs for promotion," continues Gerry. “The issue is that Mosquera arrived with two of his compatriots and asked if they could be tested: one was from Juan Guillermo Cuadrado. He was skinny and had short hair, without the current curlers, but I never forgot his face, "adds Gerry, a current member of the Ituzaingó coaching staff, another Primera C team.

Mosquera himself, now 40 years old and retired from football, confirms the story from Colombia. “At that time I was playing in Argentina and I had a friendship with Juangui through a mutual acquaintance, so I was with him since he arrived in Buenos Aires to test himself. He tried River first but he didn't stay because he was category 88 and the quota was closed ”, reconstructs the former Atlanta striker, Belgrano, El Porvenir and other clubs of the Argentine ascent from Medellín. “In mid-2007 I went from All Boys to El Porvenir and took Juangui. We lived for a time in Liniers (a neighborhood to the west of the Argentine capital) and later in the El Porvenir pension (south of Greater Buenos Aires), in some rooms under the stalls of the stadium ”, adds Mosquera. A website specialized in the minor categories, in August 2007, declared its arrival:"El Porvenir, the hitch arrived: Colombian Juan Cuadrado, 19, is the new reinforcement." However, that operation would never materialize.

Explains Gerry, the then forward of El Porvenir who shared practices with Cuadrado: “He tried us for a week or two and I remember him as a striker on the sides, a short and very fast winger. Maybe it lacked power but it was pure speed. You realized that he was different. The coach (Nardozza) wanted him to stay but could not convince the leaders ”. Mosquera needs a name for the operation to fail: Enrique Merelas, the perpetual president of El Porvenir for 40 years, one of those leaders trained at the Julio Grondona school, the leader who remained at the head of the AFA for 35 years. “I think Merelas wanted to keep Juangui's sports training rights and the owners of the pass didn't think it was reasonable. Then one day he left ”, recalls Mosquera,who continues to have "a nice relationship" with Cuadrado.

Although in

Panita, this is my story

, it does not tell his bizarre passage through El Porvenir, Cuadrado does reconstruct his failed experience in Argentina. After not having stayed in River or in Boca, the future star heard how a coach said behind his back that "that Colombian is very small and very skinny." He also relates the moment when the representative who took him to Buenos Aires, before disappearing, gave him $ 200. "And with that I managed to subsist for several months," Square wrote.

"I got to the point where I had to decide whether to have lunch or eat at night, because I was not enough for both," says the footballer in his book. I decided to have lunch around four in the afternoon and drink water at night. The hunger, the cold, the weight of loneliness and the 'no' that I had received cornered me over the months. However, he kept training wherever he could, walking there, running there, asking both sides, looking for other evidence. I dreamed of staying and playing in that country ”.

Fourteen years later, when Cuadrado already played two World Cups and five America's Cups for his national team, and in July he will begin his seventh season at Juventus (he also went through Chelsea, Fiorentina, Lecce and Udinese), Gerry reflects: “It is incredible that a team of the C did not want a world star. But the kid insisted and returned to his country to start from scratch ”.

In his autobiography, Cuadrado also reconstructs that he decided to return to Colombia when, to his sporting search without results, the

economic

crash

was added

: one day he finished spending the 200 dollars that the disappeared businessman had left him. “Mom, I'm already getting very hungry. I want to go back. At least at home I have a banana with cheese. Not even that here, ”he published. Finally, in mid-2007, Cuadrado left Buenos Aires. His subsequent successes and his idol status do not need any revenge but access to the final of the Copa América 2021 seems like a great prize to beat Argentina, the football that turned its back on him.