“I would have killed for Maradona”: the confession of Gallego Méndez for his time in Gymnastics and the harsh story of his son’s illness

Sebastián Méndez was the most direct collaborator of Diego Maradona in his time as coach of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, he lived his death very closely and tried to continue his coaching career in Godoy Cruz and Tijuana, but in his first experience in soccer Mexican life again gave him an unexpected blow. This is how he told it in an extensive report given to ESPN, in which he addressed the day he confessed to Oscar Ruggeri that he wanted to retire from football and told the details of the famous kick against Radamel Falcao García for a pending account with the striker.

“Now I am fine; I had a bad time before, but she had a worse time, my son. It’s over now, luckily. We are all fine. It was a hard year, ”he narrated about the disease that Santiago, 21, suffered:“ I was in Mexico when he got sick. My mother called me to tell me, I took the first plane and, when I arrived, I was already hospitalized. I won’t go into too many details, but he was cured of something very screwed up. It’s a blessing. Many times you think why this is happening to my son and why something worse didn’t happen to him because he could be cured. I have to look at it that way, because otherwise you’re going to live regretting it. He never wanted to regret it either and he had to accompany him.

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After thanking the human quality of certain people, among them the president of Tijuana who proposed taking him to Mexico to continue his treatment, he remarked that this situation made him rethink his lifestyle: “You change, you go down to earth, you start to see what they are the most important things. For us, winning a game will continue to be essential, but there are more valuable things”.

In an emotional story, the Galician recalled how he went through with his son the title of Argentina in the World Cup: “I lived it with him, it was great. When he made his debut against Saudi Arabia, he was admitted to Favaloro, and we ended up watching the World Cup at his mother’s house, with him. Happiness… Do you know how nice it was to see him yelling ‘give him champion’? If he excites you, watching the players. For me this was the best World Cup, but not because of him. And if we lost the final I was going to celebrate the same, I didn’t care at all”. And he added: “It was a remedy to see the National Team.”

The last hospitalization lasted more than a month between the World Cup and all this ordeal included a transplant for Santiago to survive: “Deep inside, I thought that the National Team players had given him a gift. If the players knew the stories behind them, the joys they bring to the people…”.

* The memory of Gallego Méndez to Diego Maradona

In another order, he was consulted about his relationship with Diego Maradona during his time at El Lobo. He stressed that he misses him and still treasures every harangue in the La Plata entity: “As a player he would have killed a person because Diego spoke to you. If he doesn’t get to you… It was football, he doesn’t have to be so tactical either. It was pure motivation. He cared about the lives of the boys, the props and all the people who worked in the club. He was attentive to everything ”. In a joking tone and with hints of humor, he declared the benefits of having an omnipresent figure like 10: “I think he raised the contract for all of us. I was going to fight our money. If we didn’t get paid during the pandemic, he would ask us and we would say: ‘No, don’t worry Diego’ and he would answer us: ‘No, don’t worry. I set them on fire.’”

“He loved the tributes, he was happy. I’m sure, and she told us. She was very excited. It was one of the most important and craziest experiences of my life, ”she assured. And he added: “You don’t know how much the defeats hurt him. When he arrived at the locker room he was not calm. He didn’t like to lose, like anyone else. He got angry when the team didn’t play well. ‘Give the ball to the white and blue ones,’ he told the players.

The former coach of Godoy Cruz, Banfield and Palestino de Chile, among other clubs, recalled the day he was about to hang up his boots at just 29 years of age. You have to go back to the days after August 27, 2006. On that day, the Cyclone fell 7-1 to Boca Juniors at home for the Apertura Tournament. “I had it in San Lorenzo,” Ruggeri punctured him. And Méndez was lapidary: “My worst semester, Oscar. And you know. I played very badly and I felt bad for him.” “I didn’t want to play anymore,” he finished off that win.

In that round trip, Cabezón gave more details of a conversation between the two after that painful fall: “One day he shook my hand and told me that he did not play soccer anymore. I replied: ‘What? Let’s chat’. I told him to be calm because he couldn’t stop and he had to keep playing ”. In this sense, the 45-year-old man explained how he came to have that thought in his head: “You are ashamed of sports. You want to bury yourself… I spent a month without taking my children to school. I was not afraid, I was ashamed that someone would say something to me. You feel that everyone is looking at you when you go out into the street. I didn’t do anything wrong, we lost and we played badly, but it’s a catastrophe.”

Finally, he referred to the pending account that had been left with Tigre Falcao in the classics against River Plate. An old infringement by the Colombian in a Copa Libertadores match caused the defender to fracture the tibial plate of his right knee and, months later, he sought revenge with a kick to the striker’s back with studs. “I was hot. Falcao broke my knee. I knew he broke me when he kicked me. At halftime they took blood from my knee and I realized that he had broken everything. That day I said that, as soon as I could, I was going to look for him. He was with blood in his eye, ”he recalled about the origin of the fight. And he concluded: “If I talked to him? He is already. He sent me a message and I sent him one too when his father passed away. They are soccer things. 15 years have passed, he is already there ”.

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