University: Fossati, Ureña, Quispe and the story behind the 27 star that confirms who is the most champion of Peru

Cry.

The father of the family who couldn’t get a ticket to go to the Monumental with his children fogs up his TV when he kisses it, trying to pass it through. The four traveling boys who went to Trujillo after that atrocious 2-1 at the Summer Monumental were furious, and they swore not to stop going to any field, even if they had to eat dirt for another decade. Rodrigo Ureña, the Chilean, so tailored to the club, so correct in his statements, so grateful to a country that is usually aggressive when he only sees his passport and not his heart. Jorge Fossati, a few days ago, before setting foot in Matute, in a conversation with Jean Ferrari about what could be the visitors’ final. Piero Quispe, on whom perhaps we place too much hope and so much frustration, when he only wants to step on the ball and play football. My father cries, alone, when my sister sends him a beautiful photo, which is surely the photo of millions of fans throughout the country: Micaela, my two-year-old niece, sleeping happily in her ‘U’ shirt.

University of Sports cries with joy. Ten years later, and with everything against it, it has just achieved title number 27 in its glorious history. Champions are not discussed, they are explained. Heroes are not criticized, they become posters. Brief x-ray of the ‘U’ of Fossati, of Ureña, of Quispe, of Ferrari, of Carvallo, of Corzo, which today floats at the top of the sky.

Jorge Fossati, the leader

Maybe it was the day when a beloved club worker told him: “Here are the ashes of Roberto Scarone, the coach who took us to the Libertadores final.” Maybe it was the morning that Jean Ferrari called him on the phone and confessed: “Everyone I have spoken to has asked me to convince him to come to the U.” Maybe it was the night he became champion of the Clausura, and in a Monumental that was bursting, his wife sent him a kiss from the west and shouted at him: “We are going to be champions, trust in God.” Or maybe it was all that and it was Wednesday night in Matute. The maker of this miracle, the U champion of League 1 Betsson 2023, is, by far, Mr. Jorge Fossati. Guide me, oh Lord of Uruguay. The U had already knocked on his door twice. The first, when in 1993 the then cream leadership looked for Sergio Markarián and Fossati, who was his field assistant, preferred to stay at the Uruguayan River to make his debut as a coach. The second, a little over a year ago, when Universitario had already decided to recover his old Uruguayan feeling – so many surnames, Scarore, Rubén Techera, Tomás Silva – and, without Gregorio Pérez due to health reasons, they asked if a trip to Peru was possible to start a project. He couldn’t then. This year, now released from his duties in Danube, he asked three things as soon as the Ferrari administration – via Manuel Barreto – contacted him. 1) How are the 9, Herrera and Valera? 2) Why doesn’t Piero Quispe play? 3) Could we reconcile with the fans and play to a full stadium every day? He needed his 9, his 10 and his 40 thousand. Since then, he has won 15 of his 17 matches played at the Monumental Stadium. He never lost at home in League 1 2023. And in the finals against Alianza the overall score -3-1- does not reflect even half of his team’s dominance against a dwarfed rival. He gave – in just three days in Lima – his stamp: the captaincy to Corzo, whom he turned into a stopper in line of 5 and took Polo off the wing, where he was a harmless wing, to turn him into a national team footballer. . That personality was well received by his staff, with whom he talks “hours of hours” (Valera dixit), trying to explain why he does what he does. Or with whom he shares his faith in the Virgin Mary without fireworks or fuss, rather alone, in the brief spaces that he steals from work (Corzo dixit). And that he moves outwards, towards the anxious Universitario fans who last night, after ten years, were finally able to rest in peace: if Fossati says we are fine, then we are fine. This is how he returns to the ‘U’ a dominion that seemed lost, sepia, even impossible for today’s children to believe. With seriousness, hierarchy and respect for history.

For them, above all, this is also the U. Or I say well, this is the U of Jorge Fossati, a man with a CV of 20 tons who in just nine months has worked the impossible miracle for 30 technicians that the club, his situation, their enemies, crushed in the last ten years. He is healing him. He is healing the wounds in the only possible way he heals football: by winning his games. Winning this championship.

Imagine, Mr. Fossati, what will happen this Sunday, when the deep gashes in the body of the U have disappeared forever. That day you will be carried on shoulders.

The Quispe factor

A footballer for the next ten years. A possible million-dollar sale. Or who knows, the 10th of the team. The real graduation of a young soccer player is not the photo with his new car or his shopping vacation buying Balenciaga. It is, if I may, to play these types of games and win them. Fight a final against that heavy rival that is Alianza, as a visitor and there, when others hide or the ball burns them, be the figure. And never an extra word, an excess, a return, just to him, Piero Quispe, who was kicked to death by the Alliance defenders. His 2023 season could also be summarized with numbers – 42 games in the season, 6 goals – but today I prefer euphoria. The illusion. Tito Chumpitaz always insists to me: “In addition to being a great player, whom I knew as a boy at school, he is a great boy.” Few realized it but last night, after the celebrations at the Pullman in San Isidro, he received a WhatsApp message and disappeared: it was his father, who told him that there in Hacienda Naranjal, his lifelong neighborhood, 500 neighbors were waiting for him. awake to give him a hug, to ask him to take care of himself, to thank him for putting the dusty streets of Lima Norte on the map. And he left. “I always dreamed of this joy, especially in the bad times,” he said. He took a taxi and went to the only thing possible this 27th star night: cry like a child.

Rodrigo Ureña and the reinforcements

The decision was made in mid-2022. And although things went well today, the risk was immense: Universitario had decided not to renew the contracts of up to 15 first team players, some even runners-up in 2020. Or precisely because of that. The idea was based on two arguments: forming the Centennial team and finding other leaders, with experience in finals, with fire intact to fight for championships. The first two names that emerged for signing were Chilean Rodrigo Ureña and Cristal midfielder Horacio Calcaterra. Calcaterra paid his three-year contract with Matute’s great goal in the south arc. And the Chilean was a notable example within the locker room. “You don’t know what Rodrigo is. He is going to eat everyone,” Jean Ferrari wrote to me on WhatsApp in December, when we were all Googling his name. Him too: one of the first things he did was watch YouTube videos of Puma Carranza, the man who elevated a wheelbarrow to the category of a work of art.

“Today I spoke with him,” said Puma, as he stepped on Matute before anyone else. They will soon forget me, with what the Chilean plays with.” Ureña, with teary eyes, cement legs, the Chilean flag as Superman’s cape, returned the affection: “Noooo. I have a lot of respect for the club’s idols. But it’s incredible that he says it. They received me with a lot of love, they respected where I came from, my customs. I am very grateful. “I’m staying for the Centennial and three more years.” And then he put on the face of someone who is chewing the protector again, before going out to the ring.

The return of his people

It seems like prehistory when a leader of the U confessed to me, biting his words, “that it was impossible to fill the Monumental.” I don’t blame him, because it was to a certain extent logical: the distance, the drought of titles – five years then – and the stormy relationship that that administration had with the fans. It seems like prehistory, he said. In the worst moment of the contemporary era, when fear was turning into panic and the title videos had VHS fidelity, the ‘U’ fans decided to play their own game. Thousands of other reasons activated this invasion on his court. Faith. The anxiety. The satiety. The ultra-competition. The boredom The need. The revenge. Love. As if it were easy and as if that were not enough, the club decided to work and turn that hostile stadium into the closest thing to a house. And then the club’s marketing department started working 24 hours a day. I won’t say their names because everyone knows who they are – they write to them daily on Twitter – and, above all, because I love some of them from another time, I hug them in another circumstance, they belong to my family.

Today the unofficial numbers are historic -Noche Crema 47,200 fans, Apertura 339,500, Clausura: 313,000, Play Off 59,000, Sudamericana 247,900-, and the year closes with almost a million fans who filled their stands on each date that the champion played at home, it is fair to say that championships are won from all sides. When you can’t do eleven, the 40 thousand will appear. Those that today in the U they call, the usual 40 thousand.