Bernardo Cuesta: why he is the greatest idol of FBC Melgar in his entire history

The older ones talk about potato Márquez as if he were God, in the 80s the Goat Neyra was at an altar and closer, the children millennials they played at being Cachete Zúñiga at recess. It was the summary of the life of Melgar, two-time Peruvian soccer champion, until 2012, when the young Bernardo Cuesta appeared at the airport. He had played 38 matches in Tiro Federal of the Argentine Nacional B and scored 7 goals. He wasn’t very tall or tanky, but there was something in his walk, in his brief speech, that seduced him: “I can’t believe how beautiful the city is,” he said, and it was magical. He was 28 years old, he was brought by Negro Zamora and the first thing he saw was the Misti. Sometimes it’s called connection, sometimes it’s called ambition.

Ten years and 145 goals later, Bernie Cuesta is Melgar’s all-time top scorer, the only Peruvian club to win in international tournaments. The only club that wins -mea culpa- and never goes to the cover. He has surpassed Chivo Neyra -123- and Cachete Zúñiga -116-, two heroes, in this numerical table that he automatically turns into a poster. And in Arequipa, for those of us who visit it from time to time, it is never discussed; he hugs him. No one snoops around her house in Cayma, he is respected more than the mayor and her daughter Sara, born in Arequipa, is treated like a princess every time she goes to the mall with her parents. What’s more, she is expecting a new baby-she will be a boy-and she has already announced that she will be born in Arequipa. And under the baby grows she will have the wall of Melgar.

Jorge Jiménez, the journalist from Arequipa who knows Melgar best, biographer of Ysrael Zúñiga, explains to me, with the pride that does not fit in his body: “Bernardo does not declare much and prefers to speak with goals. There are the statistics, that’s enough. Here we are very regionalist and very demanding. What happened after the 2015 title, three years after his arrival, was a party: we feel that Cuesta has become another Arequipeño. And here he has already told us: he will not go to Lima, he will retire here”. That feeling only wakes her up, I don’t know, a hero of the country or a liberating general. And he stands more on titles than on Twitter: with Cuesta, Melgar won from 2015 to 2018 more than in his entire history: two Clausuras and the national title. And also with him, in the last six years, Rojinegro has become the club that gave us the most joy at an international level, with eleven wins. This Tuesday, after watching the Champions League, Melgar made the whole country feel like a champion: at minute 97 he won in Uruguay. The Lima clubs, on that radar, do not exist.

That is why in the Reniec of Arequipa less and less Marios and more Bernies are born.