Despite the fact that since Eze fell on him in the first leg, forcing him to be replaced, the care, the physiotherapy work and all the medical shortcuts would be taken to ensure that Julián Alvarez could be available, Nothing could keep the Spider away from a match that he has been visualizing and dreaming of for a long time. Specifically since 2016, just a year after entering the pension that River Plate has in the Monumental to train its future stars in football and academic terms.
Although the young man who arrived from Calchín stood out for being one of the most focused young people (also for his humility and camaraderie), the Champions schedule (4:00 p.m. in Buenos Aires) would occasionally alter his school day. This was the case in the second leg of the 2016 semi-finals in which Atlético was playing in Munich for a place in the final in Milan against Guardiola’s Bayern.
Hence, Julián, then 16 years old, did not hesitate to strategically place his cell phone on the desk so as not to miss any detail of such a high-flying game since he could not skip class. So I would witness Cholismo’s greatest exercise of resistance before Griezmann’s goal was enough to culminate a feat that makes people fall in love.
So much so that Julián’s prophecy to his trainers would end up coming true. “You’ll see when I’m there,” He told them despite the fact that at that time he was still at the beginning of his dizzying rise through the youth system and seven categories of Argentine football until Marcelo Gallardo gave him the alternative in River.
Coincidences of life, or causalities, six years later that Pep whom I saw on the mobile phone became the coach with whom I would lift the Champions League as a substitute for Haaland and now just a decade ago he returned to play in that Atlético semi-final as the flagship player of a Simeone to whom it would not cost much to draw the future that was going to be found in the Metropolitanperhaps because that day, while teaching his class, he began to understand what it meant to wear red and white.
