The story is, from the outset, suggestive: a Wayú aboriginal is already a figure with Porto in Europe, he scored two decisive and spectacular goals with the Colombia selection in the last Copa América in Brazil and already appears as an important piece in Reinaldo Rueda’s scheme.
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This Sunday, through his Twitter account, Liverpool F.C. confirmed the signing of the Colombian. The announcement came with an illustration of the player wearing the team’s jersey and the Colombian flag in the background.
“The 25-year-old has signed a long-term contract with the Reds after passing a medical mandate and finalizing personal terms,” the team said in a statement on its website.
But Díaz’s trajectory is very special. It is a fairytale story that, in a Hollywood blockbuster cliché, would surely begin by focusing on a piece of land in which a boy wearing a guayuco uniform kicks a worn and patched ball in sandals; to finish off with a scene in which that grown-up boy dresses in a tailcoat.
the guajiro Luis Fernando Diaz Marulanda, who began as a figure of the Junior of Barranquilla, showed the entire country that the figures of the Colombian National Team not only go through those absent in that last Copa América.
The player dreamed of everything he has today and is already beginning to achieve when, at just 18 years old, he joined the soccer team of his community and later became a player on the Colombian indigenous soccer team.
That was the first goal in his career, scored in guayos and not in sandals, and without speaking wayuunaiki, because he doesn’t speak it. His words are in that guajiro Spanish of the coup of a vallenato singer, one of those that he hears so much and likes so much. The Hollywood cliché melts away in La Guajira Wayú from Pajaros de Verano.
📊 Neymar averages 6.8 dribbles completed and 12.6 offensive duels won per match; Messi 6.5 and 11.5, respectively.
Yesterday Luis Díaz recorded 11 completed dribbles and 18 offensive duels won.
It’s crazy. ⚡️🇨🇴 pic.twitter.com/4JRly8FEnG
— Sudanalytics (@sudanalytics_) July 7, 2021
“I have roots and distant relatives of Wayú origin, but I am not Wayú Wayú”, he has said, as well as that he feels strange when in his town they treat him like a hero “despite the fact that I have not yet won much”.
This was the beginning of a play that began at his father’s soccer school in Barrancas, a municipality 100 kilometers from Riohacha.
Some are just beginning to know it. Especially the Argentines. “I did not know Diaz. What suffering on 4, Molina. When it began to overwhelm him, there was no way to stop it, ”said a world champion, Óscar Ruggeri, on ESPN.
the first cup
In Chile, in 2015, he played the Copa América de Indigenous villages in which the runner-up was Colombia, a team that was led by John Jairo ‘Pocillo’ Díaz, former player of Millonarios, and that had Carlos Valderrama, el Pibe, on the coaching staff, who was the one who recommended him to Junior. There he presented the tests that dozens of boys do and then ended up in Barranquilla, the subsidiary in B.
“Players, when they are bare, immediately show what they are made of and what they are made for. That pelao from childhood showed. I was surprised from the start when I had him in the process of choosing the Indigenous Team. I said, ‘this is going forward’, and in one go we put it in,” El Pibe told El Heraldo.
It barely lasted a little over a year in the second division. He played 43 games (35 in the promotion tournament and eight in the Copa Colombia). But it was noted: the coach Carlos ‘Piscis’ Restrepo summoned him to the Colombian Under-20 National Team that the South American played in Ecuador, in a team from which several have already had calls to the seniors, such as Carlos Cuesta, Juan Camilo ‘ Cucho’ Hernandez and Gabriel Fuentes. But Díaz is the one that is more consolidated.
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Coach Julio Comesaña took him to Junior for the second half of 2017. And he immediately became a great figure.
The passage through that team was not very long either, but it was enough to be noticed and show that he had a giant talent: he was champion of the Colombia Cup in 2017, of the League in 2018 and of the Super League in 2019.
And, in addition, he was part of the team that reached the final of the South American Cup in 2018, which Junior lost against Atlético Paranaense in shots from the penalty spot, in a campaign in which the peasant was fundamental, with three goals in 10 games: he scored the goal against Lanús that led the series to the tiebreaker from the white point, in round of 16, and two goals against Defense and Justice in the quarterfinals, one in the first leg and the other in the second leg.
In those two years, what he had were games to show his talent: he played 105 games in all competitions and scored 20 goals. And offers began to arrive.
He was about to sign for River Plate, but was finally transferred, in mid-2019, to a club in which Colombians always had good consideration. Porto noticed him and paid 8.5 million euros. Radamel Falcao García, James Rodríguez, Fredy Guarín, Juan Fernando Quintero and Jackson Martínez shone in that club.
With Porto, in two seasons, he has played 76 games in all official competitions and has scored 22 goals. And he already has a League title, one in the Portuguese Super Cup and another in the Cup of that country. Today, although the Transfermarkt portal lists it at 18 million, Díaz has a termination clause of 80 million. He still has three years left on his contract in Portugal.
That’s how it is on the field
His game is elegant. He hides the ball, passes it accurately, dribbles past rivals on the left side of the pitch. Sometimes it looks like a heron moving gracefully on its long skinny legs. Díaz moves his long 1.82 meters tall as an attacking midfielder behind the ‘nine’ or as a winger.
He was called up to the Colombia National Team for the first time by Arturo Reyes, who made him debut in a match against Argentina on September 11, 2018. That day he replaced John William Square. Then he had the confidence of Carlos Queiroz to continue in the team, although he was not the undisputed starter. It was with the Portuguese on the bench that he scored his first goal with the National Team, on March 26, 2019, in Seoul, against South Korea.
Rueda renewed his support and called him up to play the Copa América in Brazil and although he did not start as a starter, little by little he earned a place in the starting eleven and in what could be the base team to face the qualifiers heading to Qatar. He already has 22 games dressed in yellow and four goals scored, two of them marked by spectacularity.
(In other news: Great goal! Luis Díaz’s incredible shot for Colombia’s victory)
“We gave everything for everything, we fought to get a game forward. It was reflected, we were able to tie it. We were about to pull it off. In penalties you have to have conviction and also a little bit of luck,” said Díaz. “(Rueda) is a good coach and we are ready for what is to come,” added the farmer.
Díaz, the wayú who is not ‘wayú wayú’, the one who goes crazy for the vallenatos, who crossed the Atlantic to play in Portugal, scored two fantasy goals this Friday to give Colombia third place on the Copa América podium.
“I exceeded my expectations. I always dreamed of doing things well but I never imagined achieving everything that is happening to me. They were hard days, locked up. The teacher (Rueda) knew how to keep the group together, we happily rescued that for what is to come” , commented ‘Lucho’ after the match and his two great goals against Peru in the Copa América.
Now, according to reports from Liverpool, Diaz will arrive in Merseyside after the Colombia National Team match against Argentina on Tuesday night.
The peasant arrives at the English team after two and a half seasons with FC Porto, where he made 125 appearances and scored 41 goals, and will wear shirt number 23. Following the announcement by the English team, the shirt with the Colombian’s name and number 23 began to be sold in the official Liverpool store.
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