When he was 11 years old, in 1997, Rafael Nadal was celebrating his first minor national title with his family, the Spanish Under 12 Championship, when his coach and uncle, Toni, interrupted the celebration and read aloud the list of the last 25 champions of the tournament. His objective was to make it clear to his student and nephew that 80% of the previous winners were unknown tennis players who, after that first impact in their childhood, had not been protagonists of the senior circuit as adults. The future world number 1 then understood that his career had just begun, or had not even begun, a lesson that more than 25 years later can be extended to another sport and another place in the world.
10 days ago, on May 16, the Argentine media reported that Mateo Apolonio, a boy from Deportivo Riestra who had just turned 14 – specifically, 14 years and 29 days – had just become the youngest footballer to debut. in the First Division of his country. A second-year student in high school and a regular player in the Ninth Division – the initial step in the pyramid of the clubs’ formative categories – the teenager made headlines for having displaced Sergio Kun Agüero and Diego Maradona of the first two places in the puberty record.
Young prodigies, it is true, there always were and will be in South American football. The current edition of the Copa Libertadores is an example. At the end of April, the Brazilian Endrick, a starter at Palmeiras at 17 years old and already sold to Real Madrid for 72 million euros, faced the Ecuadorian Kendry Páez, from Independiente del Valle and already transferred to Chelsea, then 16 years old: both they scored a goal. That same day, another Argentine, Franco Mastantuono – in the periscope of Real Madrid and Barcelona, according to Spanish newspapers – entered the statistics as the youngest scorer of a goal for River Plate in the Libertadores, also at 16 years old. But Apolonio’s case is different because, unlike the previous ones, he did not appear on the radars: he took a step as if he were on the moon, almost without gravity, and skipped seven divisions from one game to the next.
The boy born in Buenos Aires on April 17, 2010 made his debut in the top category in the recent Newell’s 1-Riestra 0 for the second phase of the Argentine Cup. The history specialists agreed that, except for one emergency case, that of Hugo Aicardi, a Racing goalkeeper aged 14 years and 11 months who stopped in the middle of a professional strike in 1975 and did not play in the First Division again (that day received 10 goals from Rosario Central), Apolonio had shattered the record that belonged to a star: Agüero made his debut in the Independiente First Division in 2003, at 15 years and 33 days old, the kickoff for an exceptional career that would continue in the Argentine national team, Atlético de Madrid and Manchester City. He KunIn turn, he had displaced Maradona from first place, who was 15 years, 11 months and 20 days old when he played his first game for Argentinos Juniors, in 1976.
Debuting in the Primera in Argentina is the final point of a very long and extremely difficult process. If thousands of kids start with a similar dream – which often includes economic emergencies in a country where 70% of young people are poor, although this is not the case of Apolonio, a member of a middle-class family in Buenos Aires -, it is hardly A handful achieve it: along the way, not only the most fit footballers advance, but also those with the greatest mental strength. Son of a footballer – his father, Claudio, played in Ascenso clubs such as Excursionistas, in the fourth category, in the late 90s -, Mateo Apolonio joined the Riestra children’s teams in February 2022. He was 11 years old.
Already at the beginning of 2024, like the rest of the boys his age, he made the leap to the youth categories, the so-called “lower divisions” in Argentina. It is a training, competitive and filtering cycle in which young people progress year by year from the Ninth Division to the Fourth, when they rehearse the last step to the Third and finally to the professional team. The exit hole of that funnel is very small. According to statistics, only 3% of teenagers who start in Novena, when they are between 13 and 14 years old – in 2024, boys born in 2010, like Apolonio, participate – will complete the path to First. Mateo, however, achieved it in a trice.
His life took a fabulous turn two weeks ago. On Saturday, May 11, for the seventh date of the Novena championship, Mateo participated in Riestra’s 2-1 defeat against Huracán without knowing that he would be summoned to train with the professional team from Monday the 13th and that immediately, on Thursday the 16th –in his first call-up with the seniors-, he would enter the playing field again but, this time, to play a First Division match, against Newell’s. “Mateo had trained a few times with the Primera as an experience that the club does with some young people,” says Claudio, his father. According to data from specialist Carlos Durhand, from the newspaper La Capital de Rosario, Apolonio went on to accumulate “44 games in Riestra: 20 in the sub-12 in 2022, 17 in the sub-13 in 2013, 7 in the 9th Division” and the remaining , unexpectedly, in First.
But, beyond Apolonio’s conditions, those who know the work of the training divisions in Argentina assure that his debut would have been impossible in another club. With very little fans, minimal corporate mass and a stadium for 3,000 people, Riestra is the most atypical team of the 28 that compete in the First Division of Argentina. Also, one of the least loved: in a football that prohibits the arrival of Sports Joint Stock Companies – and even resists the attack of the President of the Nation, Javier Milei -, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) allows an exception with Riestra, which will not be a SAD but is fueled by private capital. His progress was meteoric: in less than 10 years, between 2014 and December 2023, he added four promotions and went from the last category, his historic place, to the First, where he had never been.
That tour was full of controversies due to favorable referee rulings and marketing work to attract attention: he hired Maradona to join some practices, in the preseason he trains from 3:30 to 4:30 in the morning, electronic music plays in his stadium and some of its players enter the playing field with cans of energy drinks – or consume them during games -, the club’s main sponsor. Even Riestra wears Adidas clothing – something that only River and Boca, the two main clubs, plus the world champion team do in the country – but not by official agreement: periodically, a club employee goes out to buy generic black T-shirts. the German clothing brand, in commercial premises in Buenos Aires, and then stamps the shield, numbers and advertisements on them.
In that context, and without doubting the possible future of Apolonio (captain of the Novena and left back whom his youth coach compared to the Brazilian Roberto Carlos, former Real Madrid figure), the football environment conjectures that his debut Such an acceleration can only be explained by another attempt at Riestra’s publicity impact: making noise in the media and entering the Guinness of records. “At the cost of exposing him to the danger of being hurt because of the physical difference, for mere marketing and clickbait,” wrote journalist Roberto Parrottino in Time. Spokespersons for the club do not deny – in a low voice – that this propaganda attempt existed but they explain that Riestra chose a team of substitutes and youth players for the Argentine Cup because, supposedly, he prioritizes the Professional League (although this Friday the third date was only played of the tournament) and the Reserve championship (although the team is ninth in its zone).
“I was in the living room of my house and my mother called me. My dad was crying on the phone and I didn’t understand anything. He told me: ‘You were summoned for the First.’ Whatever happens, it will be a beautiful memory,” Mateo said hours before his debut. “We were following it, it is a bet that the club is making,” added Cristian Fabbiani, the Primera coach.
Already on May 16, Apolonio accomplished the historic event: he entered 40 minutes into the second half against Newell’s. Added to the injury time, he totaled 12 minutes on the playing field, a period in which he did not touch the ball and had to face intimidating rival defenders, such as the Uruguayan Armando Méndez, nicknamed Hulk for his bodybuilder appearance and protein diet that includes eight egg whites per day. Apolonio, in full growth stage, measures 1.54.
Alan Fochile, the coach who in 2022 took the test through which Apolonio entered Riestra, was watching the game on television: “The commentator said that he felt a little sorry for the boy in case he got hit, but I can assure you that he didn’t. they pull He is a creature, but physically he is a tractor for his age, he always made a difference,” he says. On the other hand, Newell’s coach, Mauricio Larriera, expressed some concern: “I like when kids debut but it seemed very small to me. As a father I think ‘what a danger’ because he is at a stage of development that is not convenient.”
“It changed his life”
Claudio, Mateo’s father, says: “My son’s life changed: after his debut they recognized him on the street and asked for photos. It’s a joy that no one can take away, but we never stop knowing that he is a boy. Luckily he is very mature and with his mother we give him the support he needs: he knows what the rules of football are, the good and the bad. Obviously, his goal is to be a professional footballer and be called up to the under-15 team, but what I want most is for him to be happy. If one day he doesn’t want to play anymore, we will support him. His priority is studying and he also wants to be an architect.”
The Apolonio case led statisticians to search for similar data. The record in America belongs to Mauricio Baldivieso, who by decision of his father, Julio César – Aurora coach – debuted in Primera at the age of 12, in 2009. He would retire in 2017, still young, when he was 21. In Colombia , the future star Radamel Falcao debuted in his country’s Ascent at 13 years old. In Mexico, Martín Galván arrived at Cruz Azul’s Primera at 14 years and 11 months, in 2008, and today, at 31 years old, he plays in Salamanca, in the Spanish third category. In Chile, Nicolás Millán debuted in Colo Colo also at the age of 14, in 2006, but then his career – still in force, at 32 years old – would continue through Ascenso clubs.
In Peru, Fernando García debuted in Juan Aurich at 13 years and 11 months, in 2001. From his native Chiclayo, now retired, he remembers: “It was very nice. Now that I’m older I think that maybe I burned through stages, but if I were born again I would want to live the same thing. Then I spent three years without playing in the First Division, I returned at 16 and was able to have a very long career with different teams, until I left at 30. For another player it would be a young retirement but I spent 17 years in the First Division.”
Apolonio returned to his school in Buenos Aires this Monday and was received with applause and banners by his classmates and teachers. But also unexpectedly, this Thursday, that is, a week after Newell’s-Riestra marked in red, a group of football historians grouped in the Center for Research in the History of Football (CIHF) revealed a hitherto unknown fact: that in That Racing 0-Central 10 of 1975 in which a 14-year-old goalkeeper had to save in a hurry, a boy of 13 years and 9 months, Carlos Castriotta, had also played, who almost half a century later became, without anyone knowing before – only he, in truth, is the youngest footballer to debut in the First Division. “I knew he had the record,” he told Clarion.
Castriotta, the real Guinness, would never play in the First Division again. Apolonio, for now, was not summoned again for Riestra’s next two games, against Estudiantes on Monday and against Central this Friday.
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