The ex-soccer player from Cali, John Hernandez, is remembered for his excellent career as a midfielder. He played for different national and international teams such as Once Caldas, Independiente Medellín, Junior, Colón from Argentina and Colo Colo from Chile.
The ‘Prince’ stood out for his goals, assists and plays. It was part of the Colombia selection for several years and even participated in the 2001 Copa América matches won by the national team.
“The group was very united, humble, always predisposed and eager to get ahead. That was fundamental to face each one of the matches… It was an immense pride to have obtained the title“, he said in a 2015 interview with ‘FutbolRed’.
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Although he is a reserved man, he confessed to the program ‘Se dice de mí’, on Caracol Television, the hard times he went through during his childhood and adolescence due to the consumption of drugs of his stepfather, Édison Hernández, who raised him and gave him the last name as if he were his own son, but also who caused him moments of pain.
It was he who first took him to the Pascual Guerrero stadium when he was six years old. However, it was he who took away his favorite sneakers to exchange them for hallucinogens.
(Also read: Osvaldo Juan Zubeldía: 40 years after his death, football remembers him).
He grew up in a difficult environment, because in the different places where he lived, he met people who offered him narcotics: “I saw people who approached me to offer me things, I saw friends who offered me drugs, I saw women or men who told me: ‘come, take this little sweet and come with me to that side“.
Hernández stated that every time he was offered marijuana He did not accept it, because he had in mind that he wanted to be a footballer: “I said: ‘Thank you very much, no, no, no, I want to play“.
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Unfortunately, his adoptive father did fall into the underworld of drugs, apparently because of the same person who had offered him a job as a mazamorrero. “my father was a junkie… My father already had a facet that when he was well, very cool, but when he consumed, that had to be done,” said the footballer.
(Of interest: Players who have won the ‘triple crown’ in soccer).
In fact, Hernández recalled, there were times when he stole things or took from his children what he had given them to get the drug.
“One day I arrived and he was in that drug form and I remember that he was going to hit my mom and I went to defend her“, he recounted. He explained that when he was going to hit his father, he vanished and does not remember anything else, the only thing he knows is that his favorite sneakers, the ones he liked the most to play soccer, disappeared from the house.
One morning his mother woke him up to tell him that Édison Hernández had died, but Giovanni had lost the love and respect she had for him. Even so, he assures that he feels sadness for not having had the financial resources to help him.
(You can read: Echenique and the Colombians who opened the doors in world sport).
“The affection and love had already gone because of so many things that my father had done… At 17, when I started playing professional football, I said ‘why didn’t you wait for me before, Édison Hernández to have put you in a place of rehabilitation and that you would have come out of that negative drug situation,'” he confessed to the program.
Although the situation of drug addiction He was marked by his father, at the age of 10 he was adopted by Gustavo Moreno Arango, who with his mother’s permission took him home to prepare him at a soccer level.
After several years of training, at the age of 17 he made his debut with Once Caldas, a team with which he played 37 games in his first season. After his arrival in Manizales, the press cataloged him as ‘The million dollar boy’ and, since then, he has earned recognition as one of the best soccer players.
(Also: Would Once Caldas change its name? Controversy in Manizales).
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Nowadays, John Hernandez He works as technical director of Atlético Fútbol Club, in his hometown, Cali.
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