This Tuesday, the football coach Martin Palermo gave an interview to A good moment, (Radio La Red) in which he spoke about his career, his present, his personal life and analyzed the role of forwards in sport. In turn, he took the opportunity to recount a memory with Diego Armando Maradonawho took him to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and with whom he formed a special relationship, and could not contain his tears when recalling that the Ten was present in one of the most difficult moments of his life, when he lost the son he was expecting with his girlfriend in 2006.
The “Titan” he was a key player in the team led by Maradona for qualifying for the World Cup 2010, since he was the author of the last goal against Peru in the qualifying phase. This historic goal earned him the ticket to close his football career in the World Cup at the age of 36, after a formidable career with Estudiantes de La Plata, Boca Juniors and Villarreal CF.
“I had never seen you cry and look that one saw you for happiness and for sadness. I want to ask you if what (Jorge) Valdano said happens to you, if he is the most present absentwhat happens to you when you see something of Diego? journalist Martin Arevalo.
“It is a void, an absence difficult to cover. the other time came Claudia (Villafane) and when I saw it, it generated emotion in me, as if something was missing, ”replied the former striker, who could not contain his tears: “The same thing always happens that emotion is going to betray me and I am like that, from the sentimental point of view, from what Diego told me. generate. The same thing always happens to me, that I can’t control my internal sensations”.
“I always thought I was going to show up: that will come out in some note ‘Diego arrived in Qatar, or Dubai, or Argentina…’ and he doesn’t arrive”, he said. At that time, Arévalo made reference to the fact that “Fluff” was the first to call him every time he had a great performance, but also in the losing streaks.
“I was always. The relationship we had, first, as a player, in his last stage in Boca we lived beautiful things. We enjoyed it with Guillermo (Barros Schelotto) for the last six months of his career. He gave you what he had, he toasted everyone. Then it was living and sharing very nice things with him, with his family, ”recalled the former striker.
“When I was having a bad time with my son, he appeared at the hospital and was with me. Those things are not forgotten. He was there when I needed him”, he said before being moved to tears, adding: “Sometimes you need that person to be by your side, that friend. Even though he was not my friend, he was that person who led me to feel the passion.” It is worth mentioning that during the 2006the former Boca Juniors soccer player she was expecting a child and found out in early August that he had died before he was born.
Finally, Martín Palermo referred to the first situation that marked his “falling in love” with Diego Armando Maradona. “In the year 94when the United States happened, I was watching television with my girlfriend, the father was there and Diego began to say that they cut off his legs. It was like that ‘love at first sight’ of what I felt for Diego and I started to cry”, he introduced.
“My girlfriend’s father looked at me at that moment and said ‘are you crying for this?’ And inside I said he doesn’t know what this person means to me and what he transmits. That love lasted and time led me to meet him, to share and led me to finish my football career playing a World Cup at the age of 36. There is nothing that makes me forget that”, concluded Martín Palermo, who in repeatedly demonstrated the feeling he has for one of the best footballers of all time.
THE NATION