Many Argentine strikers come to Colombian football with nationality under their arms, perhaps to impress, and some do, they have the gift. Luciano Pons is one of those: he is Argentine and he is a scorer. His art is scoring and scoring. He has done it all his life, all his career, from team to team, and now he is doing it at Independiente Medellín, his biggest challenge, and where he has only needed 475 minutes to show that he is not impressive because he is Argentine, but because he really scores goals. : Has 6 in 7 games.
Pons arrived in Colombia for this season quietly. And today he screams for a goal. He scored two against Deportivo Cali, one against Once Caldas, another against Cortuluá, and another pair against Junior, on the last day. One goal every 79 minutes. Today, that forward that all Colombian football is talking about, arrives in Bogotá, to face Santa Fe this Saturday, on date 8 of the League, in El Campín (4:05 pm).
Luciano is not a young man, a striker on trial, a goalscoring project. At 31 years old, this forward born in Rosario in 1990, has already come a long way. Long way. Long and rocky road. Because he has touched him from very low.
In Argentina he has the record of being one of the few players who have scored in all categories, and they are fed up: in D, with Argentino; in the C, with San Miguel; in metropolitan B, with Atlanta; in the National B, with Flandria, until he reached the first division, in San Martín, and then in Banfield, then his goals stopped being so silent, so anonymous. And there, Pons, smiling, declared in the media that his great dream was that, to play in the first division and score goals in the first division. And in what way, in San Martín he scored 34 goals and in Banfield, 44.
With that arsenal of goals in the first division, some big team had to watch it carefully. And although the Argentine press dedicated headlines and chronicles to him, the one that was interested was Medellín. His first big team, as Pons himself said upon his arrival in Colombia. And of course, if he had traveled the suburbs of the minor leagues to get out.
He doesn’t usually stay where he arrives for long, he puts on his new shirt, scores his goals and then leaves, like a worthy foreigner, like an exemplary striker in search of another destination, of other networks. Medellín brings him at a ripe moment in his career, with a one-year contract. “I did not doubt it at any time, they called me and I made the decision from one day to the next. I know what Medellín is,” Pons told Caracol Radio.
The goal mason
There are strikers who weren’t just strikers. Rather, they alternated their trade in the grass with some other exercise in life. Pons is one of those. Because when he started in football, very young, being then a goal-scorer project, he manufactured his destiny with his hands: Pons was a bricklayer.
The Argentine chronicles that have dedicated space to this nomad of the goal review Pons’ trades before being Pons. The newspaper La Nación reported last year: “In the mornings, he gave a hand in the construction of swimming pools and in the afternoons, he kicked at goal.” And when asked about it, Pons said “I always tried to raise money to be able to buy my boots, my clothes, and not bother my family.”
That transfer through the different divisions of Argentine football has been hardened in the goal trade. In the area he demonstrates with his feet the patience and precision of what he did with his hands. In his last stage at Banfield it was learned that he is also a supportive striker, not because he likes to give up goals, which are his, but because there he gave an award to his assistant on duty. A kind of pact with the goal.
In 2016 he suffered a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee, the fearsome injury for footballers. And in his last stage at Banfield he had a couple of minor injuries that reduced his scoring pace, but Pons always came out of everything to face the new challenges on the pitch.
A voracious striker
Pons describes himself as a player who tries to leave the area for a long time, who tries to generate triangulations outside, but, above all, he is a player who knows what to do if he has the goal in front of him: when he is in the area, in position of goal, has the precision and lucidity to not miss.
And although the League is still young and Pons is making his way, his figures are already surprising. It is that not even Germán Cano, the last idol of the DIM, could do in his premiere what Pons does in only 7 games. Cano needed about four months to score 7 goals. Pons came to Colombia to show that scoring is his art. That the goal is his gift.
PAUL ROMERO
Editor of THE TIME
@PabloRomeroET
more sports news
#Luciano #Pons #DIM #scorer #dazzles #League