Argentina, 1985. It rains in Buenos Aires and the lower divisions of Chacarita train on fields where the mud beats the grass by a landslide. “Wow, what a ball I got from you!” exclaims the Quinta goalkeeper, blonde hair blowing in the wind, after flying from one goalpost to the other.
The boy thinks he is Rambo, one of the fashionable movies of the time. He is the first to finish the physical exercises. He does everything quickly. He wants to show that he can save first. The boy’s name is Javier Edgardo Milei and he admires Ubaldo Matildo “Pato” Fillol. He wants to be like him.
The economy and politics were far from the life of the current president-elect of Argentina. He was passionate about football and music. The Rolling Stones’ rock and roll, especially. Armando “Cacho” Alejos, Funebrero’s recruiter, took him to the club after finishing primary school at the Cardenal Copello school.
“Today he appears with brown hair, but he was blonde. He had a very big contraction to work: he wanted to be a professional goalkeeper,” recalls Eduardo Grecco, his coach on the San Martín team, in dialogue with The nation. “He was an educated, applied person. His parents accompanied him everywhere. I ran it for a year and a half,” he adds.
Grecco, a true institution in Chacarita (he continues to train players at the club), makes his memory work: “He had a very good physique. He differed from the others in that he was a flying, saving goalkeeper. Much better under the three sticks than coming out. “Those were times when goalkeepers didn’t play with their feet.”
Few know that the newly elected president of Argentina, Javier Milei, was a promising goalkeeper from the Chacarita quarries. He became part of the first team without making his debut in official matches. He appears as a junior until he decided to study economics. pic.twitter.com/pnkqn2d7gn
— Jaime Ricardo Gómez (@JaimeRicardoG) November 20, 2023
“A match? You cannot measure his ability just by one game. But I clearly remember a 2-1 against River on the auxiliary court of the Monumental. It was his best performance in the Chacarita shirt, and the figure of that Sixth match,” Grecco continues. “He wasn’t disgusted by anything. We trained on fields that were very pasture. Whether it rained or it was four degrees, we practiced the same. Nothing mattered. And he did things that we wondered… why does he do them? I threw myself and was brave, but Milei was already euphoric,” says Gabriel Bonomi, his partner in “La 70” in Chacarita, his category.
As a central defender, Bonomi (one of about 15 youth from that group who reached the highest category) heard the shouts of ‘La Libertad Avanza’ several times. “He talked like most archers. No more than that,” he recalls.
Closed doors, in the locker room, Milei had a hard time finding her place. The reason? In youth teams, floor fees are usually paid. And aspiring footballers from all social classes coexist. Some did not forgive the “Loco del Arco” (he earned that nickname because of his style) for not lacking anything: his father, a transport businessman, and his mother, a housewife, always accompanied him. “You had to live with those people. I don’t know if he had a fight with anyone. I do know that somehow it was planted. And the others said: ‘Let’s not get involved with this one,’” recalls Bonomi.
“He was not the alpha male of the locker room,” adds his former teammate. “Not the ones who constantly encouraged you either. He encouraged himself: he pushed himself,” Bonomi continues, today dedicated to an oil company. “He would have been a very good goalkeeper, with adrenaline pumping all the time; a kind of Chilavert”, he compares him. And he takes stock of the new president’s soccer career: “He played a few games in Chacarita and on the field he was just like he is now in politics: temperamental, effusive, passionate. He reminds me of the example of the Spartans in the movie ‘300’: Temperamental, vehement, faithful to what they think. The image he gives now is not a theater role. He is like that and he is convinced of what he says.”
“I played with him when we were 15 years old,” recalls Walter Basile, an all-rounder who also wore the Chacarita shirt and joined the Under 16 team, coached by Carlos Pachamé. “He had the image of being crazy, but he was a good kid. He came out, he shouted. He was not a bad goalkeeper: if he had to play it, he played it without problems. He would have had a future, but as a goalkeeper it is much more difficult to reach first than as a field player. And even more so in Chacarita, which is a special club and they always bring goalkeepers,” says Basile, who shared training in Ezeiza with established players such as Juan José Borrelli, Alejandro Allegue, Pablo “Moncho” Fernández and Christian Dollberg.
Basile says that Milei had few goals scored because “the defense was great.” And that in the corners “he shouted and ordered them.” With the same force with which he today spreads the slogans of ‘La Libertad Avanza’, his political party.
Milei also had a time in San Lorenzo
The career of “Loco del Arco” had another shirt, in addition to the red and black of Chacarita. Although he was not signed, Milei tried out and stayed in San Lorenzo. He was also part of “La 70″ del Ciclón, the same category as Juan José Cardinal, Gustavo Tempone and Osvaldo Ozzán (former Cúcuta Deportivo player), and to which would also be added Juan Carlos Docabo, today goalkeeper coach of the main team of the Barça team and, at the time, goalkeeper of Junior de Barranquilla.
“He arrived in 1987 at the age of Fifth or Sixth,” recalls Martín Ortiz, also a goalkeeper; He is also class 70. “He arrives in the middle of the year after having played in Chacarita. They didn’t sign him, because the starting team was made up of guys who had been in the club for years. In the time he was in the club, he was never among the leaders of the locker room,” adds Ortiz, today a hairdresser.
At Ortiz’s premises, on 100 José Bonifacio Street, in the heart of Caballito, there is almost nothing that refers to football. About politics, zero. Yes there are cases of wine. And a coffee machine. In “La 70”, Ortiz is “Chúcaro”, a nickname given to him by Juan Carlos Carotti, his coach at San Lorenzo. “He was fast and when he ran he moved his legs a lot,” says the former goalkeeper, who broke himself playing soccer daddy and, although he underwent surgery, he was never the same again. He stopped playing. “Milei compared himself to Rambo and did all the physical preparation very quickly. He wanted to demonstrate. He was not very tall and sometimes he was left paying: the forwards finished from above. “He was always a histrionic goalkeeper,” Ortiz says between scissors.
Javier Milei arrived in San Lorenzo after having tested in Chacarita. He trained three hours a day and did specific goalkeeping work with a one and a half meter fence in the middle of the goal to fly from stick to stick. pic.twitter.com/YQPKmt9j3O
— Facu (@FacuDeLillo) August 28, 2023
When Milei arrived from San Martín, Ortiz was a veteran in San Lorenzo: he had been in the club since the Novena. “We saw him as very eccentric. It was already an earthquake, electric. He took out a ball and screamed. He harangued himself: ‘Wow, the ball I got from you!’” He evokes his competitor in the position, a regular starter until Juan Carlos Docabo arrived at the club from River. “Milei was not one of the main players, who made a living on their own. In the locker room there were groups, hierarchies. And he always wanted to join, he wanted to be part of it. Since he was never signed, he stopped going to training and we lost track of him,” completes “Chúcaro” Ortiz.
“The 70” of San Lorenzo recovered the trail. “I spoke to him and told him that we had a WhatsApp group. I asked him if he wanted to join and he told me yes, but that he wasn’t one to participate much. I added it and, as usually happens, he received some criticism from those who are not related to his ideology,” Ortiz recalls. Milei, already in the shoes of the economist and politician that he is today, left the group without warning. “After a month and a half he left alone,” completes his former partner.
“La 70”, which always played together in the Ciclón youth teams, disbanded when they reached the fourth category, now without Milei. “Nothing was the same anymore,” says Ortiz, the goalkeeper. However, the new president would enjoy a championship title during his time at the Boedo club.
“The amateur soccer coordinator was Osvaldo Diez (now deceased), and he used to organize tournaments so that those who did not play often and those who were not signed could have minutes. Milei plays one of those competitions and comes out champion. The team was called Forzosos de Almagro,” recalls his former teammate.
Fan of training in his time as a goalkeeper, lover of Italian football (“It’s football-science,” he once said), emulator of “Pato” Fillol, billard player by nature and admirer of Fabio Capello, Javier Milei did not become a professional . Just some training with the main Chacarita team. Now, 52 years old. that “Rambo” class of 1970 who encouraged himself to reach an impossible ball and who practiced flips with a bar placed one and a half meters from the floor aspires to be president; He achieves as a politician what he could not as a footballer: playing in the first team.
Alejandro Casar Fernandez
The Nation (Argentina)
GDA
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