in the head of Sebastian Rincon often sounds like a sauce Tito Rojas: “I will always be…”, is the chorus that reverberates the most, and when Sebastián hears it he is filled with nostalgic evocations. That was one of his father’s favorite songs, by Freddy Rincón, the ones they listened to together when he was about to tell one of the thousand anecdotes about soccer and his life. Sebastián listens to Tito today and it seems to him that his father is with him in the same ritual, singing, dancing, telling something, and with that enormous and immortal smile that death could not take away, even if a year has passed. . One year!
(It may interest you: They close the investigation into the fatal accident of Freddy Rincón; this is the conclusion)
The absence of his father accompanies him daily in the solitude in which he lives in the distant Lithuaniathe European country that Sebastián Rincón chose to play soccer for the club Panevėžys. When he is not in a game or training, Sebastián puts on his Tito sauce and with the melody he remembers Freddy. And when the record stops playing, the memory lives on. When he goes to bed it is as if Freddy Rincón spoke in his ear with his genuine joy. So, Sebastián sleeps to see if he dreams of him.
—And when you wake up, do you feel as if it wasn’t true that Freddy died a year ago…?
—That’s right… It’s not easy… I never imagined losing my dad… Less in these times… That makes one reflect and value life and love people, loved ones and enjoy them in life and share with them when you have them and not wait until it’s too late…
Around this time Sebastian is filled with greater melancholy. And it doesn’t seem Or he hides it. Talk in good spirits. He is happy because he is playing in his team, because he has adapted to football in Lithuania, and the cold and the synthetic pitches, and because he already has two goals and because he feels a rebirth in his career, just as he promised Freddy one day. But deep down, Sebastián carries the weight of his father’s emptiness, he says that he misses him a lot.
One year ago, in that fatal April, the life of the Rincón family took a turn: first with the terrible traffic accident, then with Freddy’s incessant struggle in a hospital, and finally, on a sad April 13, with the announcement lethal: the appearance of death with all its fury. One year now…
“It is something that I will never get over. Those who say that time heals everything, not at all, every day and with each passing time their absence is greater, but I think that with my football I can make him proud of me, it is my motivation and the promise that I I did”, says Sebastián, who carries in his veins the heritage of his father, salsa and soccer, except that he is a striker, and at the age of 29 he has been in teams like the Portland Timbers of the United States; Tigre, Aldosivi, Sarmiento, Huracán and Barracas Central in Argentina and even in Vitoria in Portugal where he played little. Being in Lithuania is his “European revenge”, he says.
It is something I will never get over. Those who say that time heals everything, not at all, every day and with each passing time their absence is greater
If Sebastián is asked today what he remembers most about his father, the words flow like great goals. They are flashes of memory, so he says, with a voice that fluctuates between emotion and some silences, that Freddy was his best friend, that he will never have anyone like him to talk to. He says that they talked a lot, that they were endless talks whose memories are like his treasures. Football and life anecdotes that Freddy narrated with grace, painted with smiles, dotted with laughter, with Tito Rojas enlivening the gatheringswith some episode of the National Team in between, and while all that is being written here, it’s like seeing Freddy smiling and laughing and telling something or celebrating a goal against Germany right now: treasures…
freddy’s greatness
A year ago, in that melancholic April, Colombia said goodbye to Freddy Rincón, one of its most emblematic soccer players, an unbreakable mast of the Colombian National Team, an iron armor on the field, a sumptuous Rincón, a roaming goal cry, a Corner never toppled from his hero status. A year ago he left for the celestial fields to invent new wonderful tunnel goals that he will surely be doing somewhere now, while he watches his family from a distance, and what Sebastián does in soccer.
The farewell, Sebastián says, was moving, seeing so many people crying and saying goodbye to an idol, his father, is something that marked him. “Not even my dad realized how big it was,” Sebastián says with complete certainty. and the voice gains strength in its tone. Now her words come out impregnated with a natural pride. “He was a detached person, he did not live like Freddy Rincón but like an ordinary person, you could have a beer in the best place or in the best restaurant in the country, just as he could be in a popular neighborhood. He always had humility, that way of being affectionate and cheerful that made people love him so much… we felt that at the farewell, not only in Colombia, but in the world”.
Sebastián has one consolation left and that is that while he was alive he was able to tell Freddy how proud he was of him and that he wanted Freddy to be proud of his son too. In the midst of their usual talks, when each song led to an anecdote, Rincón advised Sebastián, just at a moment of long pause in his sports career, and told him: “When the time comes, you can give much more than what you have given ”. Sebastián does not forget the advice. “All of this,” he says, “helped me open my eyes to take advantage of the fact that I’m still young and I can achieve things in soccer, it was what we talked about, it was my promise… My dad knows… he knew,” he corrects himself when he realizes that he mentions it in present—of the promises I made to him, because they were made while he was alive. Now that he is gone, I am even more focused on achieving them”.
He does not want to talk about the judicial part. He says that his older brother is in Cali in charge of the issue, along with the lawyers, but he assures that the “process” to determine what really happened continues. One day, not soon, she will return to Colombia to find out everything.
Meanwhile, every time Sebastián Rincón takes to the field in Lithuania, he faces the same challenge, leaving his father’s last name high, because all eyes inevitably rest on the idol’s son. He doesn’t want to be compared, he just wants to play, score goals in honor of Freddy. “I take the last name with pride because I am the son of Freddy Rincón, who gave joy to so many people, and happiness on and off the field. I concentrate on mine, on making my story without comparing myself to him. I will be remembered as his son but I want to make my own name, ”he sentences and thus ends the talk of memories.
Perhaps in his room now a salsa is playing at full volume in Tito’s voice, so that Sebastián keep remembering the father who left a year ago and the idol who stays, the one who will always be, as the song says…
PAUL ROMERO
Editor of EL TIEMPO
@PabloRomeroET
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