Independent Medellin

When I was a child, my only great gift for Christmas was the O’Higgins t-shirt. Never during my entire happy childhood in William Braden, did I ask the old Easter boy for anything else.

Year after year, the greatest desire was to wear the “Celeste” clothing and go out to play with friends on December 25 in the morning, very early, on the dusty field in my sector, which, for us, dirty and starving brats, was the El Teniente stadium packed with fans chanting our names.

But the dream of playing and enjoying on the grass of the main venue is only fulfilled by a few, those who won the battle against indifference and triumphed in the adversity of rigor and discipline. Because to shine in football and in life, responsibility and motivation are fundamental and unwavering pillars.

Therefore, when “Toño” Díaz launched the diagonal center towards the Everton area and behind everyone (without a mark) Esteban Alex Calderón González appeared on the floor, those memories arose like a stampede in my mind and I am sure that they also in his.

Hundreds of training sessions, days of exhaustion and fatigue, cold, rain and problems getting around. Malicious training technicians and representatives. Desire for success and risk of failure. All of this exists in the career of a young man who presents his cards to the national sports world.

His expressive tears and emotion, after scoring the first professional goal, are a message for the children who come, who train during the week at the Monastery and have the same plan.

There is the way and the love of the t-shirt. Calderón, without meaning to, transmitted to all of us fans his same joy and happiness. He pushed us to believe that you can, when you want. That this team can rise up in times of pressure and that the leadership it holds today is no coincidence.

It was not strange to lose games like Saturday’s in the past, but now there is a different and immeasurably important component: it seems that everyone is rowing in the same direction.