University, the Centennial and the Apertura: it seemed impossible but the giant that had been asleep for decades, woke up | OPINION

Sleeping for years, decades, the giant has awakened. His step makes any court tremble and the step from him is intimidating. Just look, for example, at his best defender and his best attacker, Andy Polo. In the bad times, which have been many, the sleeping giant looked immense, abandoned, and he awoke so much sadness that one says, one thinks, I hope he is just resting and his heart has not died. So that when he wakes up, like this afternoon in a stadium with 70 thousand people who would be willing, I don’t know, to give him an arm, a leg, blood transfusion, the heartbeat can be heard nationwide. The signs of life sound like the music of an orchestra. The goals you celebrate serve to add championships. Like when those university kids decided to create it, a hundred years ago, in one of the hallways of their faculty.

In the good times, what the giant will be like in the good times. What will it be like when I wake up?

Well it has happened. It’s happening. Before our eyes here on their court, Universitario, that sleeping but never dead giant, is the winner of the Apertura after fulfilling the only possible mission: beating Chankas 4-0 and hoping that Cristal adds three points in their match in Cajabamba just by 1 -0. He had already been national champion in Matute and winner of the Clausura, six unforgettable, fertile months. Miraculous. But this year was different, an obligation. Which is summarized in the brief speech that Aldo Corzo offered in the middle of the field, such a hero on the field, so forceful in his harangues:

-The story is ours, guys. It belongs to us.

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The best man of the afternoon is Orejas Flores (two goals) who was just a child when the giant was fading, falling to pieces, collapsing and returned to fulfill the task that is assigned to children when they leave home for years that seem like centuries: give back everything he gave you. In his case, 7 decisive goals (between League 1 and the Cup). “He is a very tough leader in the locker room, very critical. He is attentive to whoever needs something, he talks to the little ones and gets angry, even though he always has that baby smile,” a very close source within the club tells me. And he adds something else: “Perhaps he may be the only one capable of convincing Ruidiaz to return.”

The other two goals came from a distant land: Alex Valera, who watched the U in Lambayeque on TV when he was training for play soccer, and Tunche Rivera, what a magnet of joy, who completed a thousand domestic tasks to help in his house in Tarapoto and In his notebooks, on the last page, he drew himself with the number 11 and a legend that said Give U Champion.

Those four gentlemen put the U at the top, again. The fifth beatle is Andy Polo, the marathon runner, the best footballer in League 1 in the first half of the year, who until now must continue running, defending as he defends the U

It is June, two months before the Centennial, the formal party – party with international concert, luxury guests, eternity, details soon in DT – and the U, that giant that for decades seemed dormant, is taking sure steps towards what which must be a real reconstruction. It must be said that he was the one who scored the most points (40), the one who had the best goal difference (+25), the one who conceded the fewest goals (7), the one who lost the least (1 game). He had the figure of the tournament -Andy Polo, 8 average points for DT- and the most sensible and practical coach of the first six months, Fabián Bustos. This Saturday at 4 pm, when the U was 2-0 and needed at least two more goals, he made a decision that describes him in the present and gives him weight within the locker room for the future: he took out the predictable Portocarrero, the the only footballer he signed, given his excessive capoeira and zero football, zero passing, zero association.

“We brought in a professional who works, works and works, even if it seems little,” says Jean Ferrari one afternoon, on the other end of the phone. When these first six months were just a project.

And it must also be said that it is still in the process of paying off all its economic debts, as monstrous as the past administrations, which allowed any unwary person to suspect that the U, which is a centenary U, was going to die. It must also be said that it is still in the process of paying off all its economic debts, as monstrous as the past administrations, which allowed any unwary person to suspect that the U, which is a centenary U, was going to die.

The others, those that are emotional, those that left us with immense wounds, are being healed, little by little.