There was a time in Colombia when virtuosity had the name of an English admiral. A mobile phone company then launched a five-word ad campaign, full of misunderstandings: “Put James in your life.”
It was not necessary to explain much more. Putting James in your life meant filling the existence of beauty, harmony, talent, success and other types of adjectives with which those responsible for the spot surely filled the blackboard in their office before launching it.
Now, years later, an entire country is questioning why the most talented footballer in its history, the one who represented so many virginal qualities that it was not necessary to name them, has ended up playing in Qatar at an age when he should be among the nominees to win. The gold ball.
Colombia has been the cradle of hard-working cyclists, self-sacrificing men who left their lives in the mountains. From the beginning, it was clear that James Rodríguez (Cúcuta, 1991) belonged to another line, that of the chosen ones. His emergence occurred at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The 10th of the Colombian team floated on the grass. The world discovered a fabulous player. He had the technical, physical and mental conditions that accompany great footballers. His character, according to the reports prepared by the scouts, accompanied him. He was obsessive and critical, possessed inner fire. The temperament of dissatisfied athletes.
The president of Real Madrid, the constructor Florentino Pérez, signed him to Monaco for 80 million dollars in 2014. James was then 23 years old. His first year was very good, under the command of Italian Carlo Ancelotti, being the midfielder with the most assists and goals that season. In the following, his performance decreased. He came across coaches who had no faith in him, such as Rafa Benitez or Zinedine Zidane. “Zidane couldn’t even see it, he hated it, but he never explained why,” says a reporter who covered Madrid at the time.
James’s is a story full of loose ends. The secrecy of the player and his environment have not helped to clear up the unknowns. The only interview in recent years in which a certain intimacy exudes is awarded it to a Colombian comedian, Suso, which imitates a browed shoe shine in the style of the characters from Chavo del 8. Outside of that, nothing, just silence. From his years in Madrid it is known that he lived in La Finca, an urbanization of millionaires, and that that time coincided with his divorce from the volleyball player Daniela Ospina.
It is then that in sports gatherings his poor performance was attributed to his private life. The Madrid night, they slip, had confused James, as happened to Ronaldo or Raúl in the past. The effort in training was questioned. The accusations seemed implausible. James He made his professional debut in Colombia at the age of 14 and at 17 in the Argentine first division, where playing soccer is like fighting in a trench. Another of the unknowns has to do with his position in the club in those days.
Players signed by Pérez himself are considered strategic signings. It was the case of Benzema, Kroos or Bale. They tend to always play. The rights derived from presidential status often make life easier for them. James, on the other hand, did not have that halo of protection. His portraits of those days are not clouded. Other players with less qualities are established and will make longer careers within the club. James, no.
On New Year’s Day 2016, the police chased him down a road in Madrid. James sped away in his car. The contempt cost him 10,400 euros. That day, Sarah castro, a sports journalist, had boarded a plane hours before the incident. When he reached his destination, he had 40 missed calls on his mobile. Castro, current director of Ace Colombia, had been covering the national team since 2013, that is, shortly before the emergence of James. He knew his trajectory in detail. James’s wayward sanbenito, something that hadn’t been absolute during his career, grows with this incident. “When he doesn’t get the attention he feels he deserves, he may lose interest. That happened to him then. He is someone who needs to feel loved, valued, ”Castro says by phone.
The attention James receives in his country is overwhelming. Each of the steps in his career has generated a national debate, without exaggeration. It is talked about in the seat of the Government, in cafes and in mental hospitals. Castro believes that the magnifying glass on him is excessive, as if the frustrations of the country and those of his own individuals, the miseries that each one drags, we end up projecting on James. “It has been a long time since I stopped reflecting my failures in footballers. We want them to lead the life we have dreamed of. And no. He valued things over sports. And it’s not necessarily bad, ”he continues.
That of your personal decisions is another swampy, codified terrain. Analysts pick up little bits and pieces of his biography and interpret them as best they can, like the cryptic words of a pope. It is known that, after the marriage with Ospina, with whom he shares a daughter, he had a child through a rented womb, perhaps inspired by the experience of Cristiano Ronaldo. By then he was already playing for Bayern Munich, where he had been loaned out by Madrid. There he found the warmth and support that had vanished in Madrid.
The German club, after two years, wanted to keep James in ownership, as expressed by its CEO, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. But he did not want to, he preferred to return to Madrid. There he met Zidane again. The misunderstanding, the misunderstandings between them, had not been resolved two years later. The Colombian spent almost a year in white. “In recent times, I don’t know if his decision-making has been correct. Sometimes you have to be patient to achieve certain things ”, he adds with subtlety. Nicolas Samper, sports writer.
Suddenly, he analyzes, it would have been better to stay in Germany. Bayern have built a fearsome team in the following years, without James. “But we didn’t have a crystal ball, of course,” he says. As a Colombian and as a soccer fan, he recognizes that being James Rodríguez, someone who has been tried to deconstruct in advertising fiction so that everyone has a little bit of him, should not be easy. “Everyone talks about your life, about your decisions. It’s tough, ”continues Samper.
The misstep he took in his second spell in Madrid continued in Liverpool, after signing for Everton. He went to play with Ancelotti, who had pampered him in Madrid and had taken him to Munich, but after being dismissed a surly man like Rafa Benítez arrived, little given to caressing his players on the back. James plummeted again, to his lowest point. A month ago, with few options in sight, he signed for Qatar’s Al-Rayyan, a minor team in a minor league, albeit riddled with money. In Colombia it has been taken with a personal injury, of which everyone has an opinion.
His problems with the Colombian coach, Reinaldo Rueda, with whom he had his pluses and minuses last summer for not having summoned him to the Copa América that was played this summer, have distanced him from his countrymen. Also from people who know him well, like the Argentine Jorge Barraza. He was the author of a biography, James on top of the world, which portrayed very well his emergence into the elite. The journalist replied in an article published in the newspaper Time some statements from James in which he said he had nothing to prove.
“Said with the utmost respect and appreciation, James: there is always something to prove. The more you climb, the more commitment there is; the more affection the public gives, the obligation increases. There are millions of Colombians who love him and expect him not only to shine, but to play every game, train to the fullest, lead the life of an athlete, be always available, empathize with the coach, sacrifice himself. And not only fame and social networks: court, goals, presence, delivery, “he wrote.
Will that James come back? Impossible to know. Barraza, on the phone, thinks he knows when the player went wrong, at the time when Jorge Mendes began to represent him, when he played for Porto. “That did him great harm. Mendes turns you into an ultra-millionaire automatically, but you stop having the love of the ball, you are a model. You have a way of speaking, of introducing yourself, but you stop having a dressing room, football in your veins ”, he gets excited on the other side of the receiver.
Anyway, even this exotic adventure by James makes a lot of noise in Colombia. His compatriots hope that he will get back in shape and play for their national team again. The digital media narrate the Al-Rayyan matches live, which are played in almost empty stadiums, where the echo from the stands can be heard. The television stations analyze the game afterwards, in virtual fields full of players that nobody really cares about. James scored his first goal the other day and celebrated without much enthusiasm.
The player’s personal brand has undoubtedly deflated to the point that right now the idea of putting James in your life has some conflicting overtones. The immaculate brand that it represented a few years ago has ceased to exist. The Marginal, a Netflix series, is about a mob operating inside a prison. The protagonists are the Borges, two Argentine brothers. The malefic brain of the band, capable of making empanadas and sancocho with the corpses of their enemies, is a Colombian whose name is James, oh surprise. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
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