The triple preparation of Matías Dituro

“He is a special guy, with a lot of substance”, they warn in Celta de Vigo about Matías Dituro (Bigand, Santa Fe, 1987), the first goalkeeper he looked for in the last nine years outside his quarry, a fact that has an asterisk because ten years ago he had spent a campaign in the subsidiary.

Soccer sometimes delivers a passport to maturity and this Argentinian from the village has already put the stamp on it a long time ago.

The trip began in Bigand, 70 kilometers from Rosario.

“6,000 inhabitants, my childhood, the team from my town, Independiente, family, friends, my wife is from there and we have been together all our lives… Having some mates at dawn with my dad, who has a small supermarket.

There are 12 blocks by 15 and around the whole field, but there I am Mati.

For me, going back to Bigand is like going to Paris”, reviews the Celta goalkeeper.

That root took off with 16 years and an exile to Buenos Aires after the ball.

When he was offered a destination outside the country, he said yes before consulting the map and ended up in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon jungle.

"And I was happy there," he notes.

He did not stabilize in a brief Spanish adventure in the affiliates of Alavés and Celta and toured various destinations in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile before returning to Vigo this summer without much focus.

At this point in the League, Celta hosts Real Madrid in Balaídos (18:30, Movistar) with 12 fewer goals conceded compared to the previous year, a treasure for a team that has had its defensive performance under suspicion for years.

Dituro alludes to a collective effort.

"I want to claim that we are a very intense team when we lose the ball," he says.

Celta must decide whether to pay 1.8 million euros for his pass, which belongs to the Chilean club Universidad Católica.

"We haven't talked about that issue," Dituro slides.

Paying that money for someone who is about to turn 35 might seem far-fetched, but there are caveats that are belied by performance.

“The career of footballers extends with attention to detail in preparation and I have a challenge with myself to go beyond 40 years at the highest level.

I see myself prepared because I am passionate about football, training, correcting the technical details, day to day, travel and concentrations, ”he explains.

That enjoyment, he clarifies, comes as a consequence of a process.

Dituro enjoyed football as a boy and he does it now, perhaps more than ever.

But in the meantime he must have resolved some issues.

"I took on responsibility and receiving goals hurt me a lot, I got hooked on some situations that occurred in games and my head went to the past or the future, I didn't focus on the present".

There arose a model of triple preparation to value the field work and that is articulated in the hours before the matches.

Dituro is passionate when he describes it: “On the one hand there is the technical talk with teammates, then the specific one with the group of goalkeepers and our coach in which we go more specifically into the actions from set pieces and nuances of the rival forwards. ”, he develops.

There are already four years of experience in this field, a time that identifies it as a "click" to learn to live with error, tolerate it, manage it and grow to avoid it.

“It was there, maybe even a little earlier, that I started to enjoy the games.

We spoke once during the week and then about four hours before the game.

They are relaxed conversations that deal with weekly work, the rival to face, the information I have about him or about my colleagues.

And so I am getting into what I am going to find in the field, ”he details.

In this process imagine the game that is to come, for example this day.

“I expect an open duel, with a Madrid that takes advantage of the spaces very well, as happened to us in the first leg.

We went ahead twice and suddenly they were a hammer.

Then, with room to run, they were lethal.

We know how they can hurt us”, he says before concluding: “And we have Iago [Aspas], who thinks differently and executes differently.

Having him on the field gives me the peace of mind that at some point that left foot will generate an opportunity in our favor”.

He will be under the sticks, solid in luck such as penalties, in which he has stopped three of the five that were thrown at him.

In his first year in Bolivia he made history by saving seven of eight attempts.

There he exposes the benefits of his fondness for the analysis of the rival.

And he never stops enjoying it in his field of dreams.

"I had the illusion of being a First Division footballer in Argentina, the road was hard and I opened my mind to go to other places, but that made me an autonomous person".

The dream, about to turn 35, is still alive and is reactivated.

“The national team, even if it's a friendly… It would be a reward for the effort and perhaps it will help if someone is traveling the path that I did before, they can understand that sometimes things come… And sometimes they don't.

But you tried."

And if not, there will always be Bigand.

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