MILAN – Football may have been invented in England, but it was in South America that the game became a spectacle of passion, emotion, heart. The South Americans took football and made it their own.
They didn’t just play football – they lived it. It was in South America that the concept of fans – hinchas, as they call them there – really took off. It wasn’t just the players that walked out onto the pitch. The fans were right there with them, screaming out their passion.
Visit San Siro nowadays and it’s difficult not to let your heart be captured by Gary Medel. He’s the kind of player you just know isn’t going to let you down. His No.17 shirt becomes the first one you look to for support.
Medel has always been that way. He’s earned the right to wear that shirt, having shed blood, sweat and tears to make it in the game ever since he first pulled on a pair of boots: back in working-class Chile, people wanted to right the young Medel off because of his size – too short to play football, they said.
Yet every obstacle was blown away by Medel’s strength of determination, a steely will forged in the tough Conchali area of Santiago de Chile, where Pinochet’s pseudo-economic miracle and the development model championed by a group of economists known as the Chicago Boys had not delivered the fruits it had promised. Santiago was a city of social and economic problems, of frustration and anger, but Medel cared for little but the jersey of Club Deportivo Sabino Aguad and duly channelled every drop of his energy into his beloved football.
Football fans can always recognise their own. You can almost smell that crazy, fairy-tale passion for the game in a fellow believer. Medel was one of them. And the youngster was soon called to a trial with the youth sector of Universidad Católica, one of the most historic clubs in the capital. The shirt became a second skin for Medel, who still supports the club to this day.
Born in 1987, Medel would go on to form part of Chile’s golden generation, but in the U20 World Cup in 2007 he and his team-mates – Arturo Vidal and Alexis Sanchez among them – tasted disappointment at the hands of old foe Argentina in the semi-finals. Even so, it was a tournament that showed the nation that Gary Alexis Medel Soto was destined for big things.
He didn’t have to wait long for his coming-of-age moment. In 2008, he was part of the senior Chile team that beat Argentina 1-0 at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago. In the 82nd minute of the game, Lionel Messi bore down on goal, ready to restore business as normal – but he hadn’t reckoned on Medel’s foresight, as the tireless midfielder cleared Messi’s effort on the line to cap a masterful performance. When the final whistle arrived minutes later, the stadium rose as one to cheer Medel’s name, to crown their new hero.
Medel played through the pain at the World Cup in 2014, but, as the Chile coach Jorge Sampaoli put it, "that’s Gary Medel, and he plays". Indeed, the amount of passion Medel put into Chile’s mammoth Round of 16 clash with Brazil is enough to move any true football fan. In a recent interview, Sampaoli dubbed Medel and Vidal the "spiritual leaders" of a Chilean generation that has won the last two Copa Americas – their first ever cup wins, with Argentina the defeat team in both finals.
As it happens, Argentina was the first country to welcome Medel after he left Chile, as he joined the prestigious Boca Juniors. Medel was the perfect fit at a club that has always encapsulated the idea of fighting spirit. Yet Medel’s combative style should not overshadow his other qualities – only ignorant observers can fail to admire his footballing intelligence.
Sure enough, Medel has always been the first name on the team sheet at Sevilla, Cardiff and now Inter. Not just because he can play in a variety of positions, but because he is the manager’s closet ally on the pitch, the guy you can truly count on. Before his impressive performance against Roma last season, which saw him bag the winner with a long-range strike, Medel was asked what Inter needed to beat their rivals. "Head and heart, intelligence and huevos [balls]," he shot back, repeating a mantra that has guided him since his first steps in Santiago. In South America, they say that the greatest players never lose their connection with the streets they grew up on. Few would bet that Medel has.
We – the fans – are the lucky ones. For as long as there are players like Medel, there will be football – football that gets under your skin, that leaves you totally and utterly absorbed for 90 minutes. Gary Medel is the reason for your blind, irrational love of football. His No.17 is reliability, it’s heart, it’s pure passion.
Carlo Pizzigoni
