“They always say that after reaching the top the only way is down. That’s life. And that’s football too,” Diego Lugano says from his home in West Bromwich, England, one evening at the end of April 2014. “But you have to take the down side as something natural. After South Africa [Uruguay came fourth at the 2010 World Cup] and the Copa América [champions in Argentina in 2011] we experienced amazing ecstasy. Since then, these last few years, came the most difficult part: keeping ourselves up there.”
“Why was it the most difficult part?” I ask him. “Because life in football is competitive and it’s difficult to keep getting results. On the other hand, what doesn’t depend on anybody but yourself is how you approach those moments, just like the successes, as passing failures or defeats. Your approach has to be the same and that you don’t compromise on, it’s not up for discussion. And it doesn’t depend on anybody but yourself.”
“Is success dangerous?” I ask [manager] Óscar Tabárez. And Tabárez, he replies, sitting in one of the armchairs in a lounge of the Celeste Complex, Uruguay’s training headquarters: “Victory, as I said in Argentina, is the sweet that rots your teeth.”
Uruguay reached that most threatening place: success. From the tributes in parliament, from the celebrations in the empty stadium after the Copa América, they began the qualifiers for Brazil in October 2011 on a high – if it wasn’t the peak, it felt a lot like it. Because in those first five games, they won against Bolivia, Chile and Peru and drew with Paraguay and Venezuela. They rose to second place in the Fifa rankings in 2012 and some players dazzled, such as Luis Suárez who scored four goals against Chile. And after all that they hit the ground with a bump.
“It was from the second half of 2012 until the end of March 2013,” Tabárez recalls, “when out of 18 points I think we won one, we got thrashed, we couldn’t buy a win, as they say.” In those months Uruguay lost to Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, and drew with Ecuador and Paraguay.
After the 2-0 defeat to Chile, in the changing room at the National Stadium in Santiago, they were broken, distraught or furious. “That really wounded us because we were in a tremendous footballing slump,” Lugano recalls. “Nothing worked for us and we didn’t respond. At that moment, we were out of the World Cup, practically. From then on there was no margin for error.”
After the Chile game there were three months until the next fixture, against Venezuela, in June 2013. In those months they prepared, talked among themselves, thought, and tried to change things.
“Those three months were huge,” Lugano recalls. “All the more so coming after three or four such good years. The fear that everything we’d done would come apart or would be wiped from people’s memories by failure to qualify for the World Cup in Brazil … The truth is that fear crossed my mind.”
In silence they had to rearm, like an army. Circle the wagons. Grow from within.
And they did it. First, preparing physically and mentally for the games, by doing special work at their clubs and, for those who were injured, not risking anything with their team to be ready to play for the national side. “In the most difficult moments, from the youngest to the oldest, everyone wanted to be there. Everyone wanted to play. And everyone prepared themselves to do so,” Lugano adds.
But also – above all – with little everyday gestures. Gestures that drew on history, remembering where they came from. Someone prepared a video of all the criticism they had taken in the qualifiers for South Africa 2010, and they watched it together. To remember what they had been through, how they had been written off and then gone on to succeed. To remember what they had already done and what they could do again.
Gestures that recovered the good times, so that they could experience them again. Diego Godín recalls that Gustavo Zerbino, one of the survivors of the Andes tragedy in 1972, gave them a talk during the qualifiers, telling them they had to go back to the ritual or habits they had had when things were going well. Those that also helped them to focus, even if it was just putting one sock on before the other before a game. And he also recalls that Zerbino gave as an example the tennis player Rafael Nadal. “You see Nadal play a tennis match,” Godín explains, “and it drives you crazy because he always does the same thing and the guy is No1. The tennis player is the maximum expression of concentration and Nadal always touches his hair, bounces the ball I don’t know how many times … And he always does the same thing. Why? Because he repeats a ritual that serves to concentrate and focus him on the next point.”
Zerbino suggested to them then that they should do this as a group, going back to the experiences that had served the group well, even if it was just eating lamb together. “As part as a ritual of unity. Those small details …” says Godín. Gestures that added to what they had built, integrating new arrivals. And making them feel at home. With tiny, almost invisible acts. Almost.
Such as when Diego Forlán approached Christian Stuani, a recent addition to the team, before the game against Argentina in October 2012, and said: “Come on, let’s go to the kitchen. I’m going to make you a birthday cake.” And they went to the kitchen and Forlán started beating and mixing, so Stuani could have a cake for everyone to sing “Happy Birthday” to him over dinner.
In this way they rearmed. And, after those three months since Chile, came Venezuela in the Cachamay stadium in Puerto Ordaz in June 2013.
The day before, Tabárez gave a team talk, and the players said that meeting marked “a watershed”. “That was the end of the road,” says Tabárez. “We knew we had no future if we lost. But neither could we approach the game with those fears.”
At the end of the talk, and after seeing a video of the opposition, the players asked: “Can we stay on a bit? And if need be we’ll put dinner back 15 minutes.”
And that’s what they did. Lugano showed them the surprise he had prepared: a motivational video in which the voice of Al Pacino – from the film Any Given Sunday – told them they had to come out fighting inch by inch, while they watched images of themselves playing for La Celeste.
In the changing room, before going out on the pitch, Lugano spoke to his team-mates. Perhaps they hugged afterwards, or patted each other on the back, to complete in some way what they couldn’t say in words.
And so they took the field. And, with Edinson Cavani, they all scored the winning goal. Uruguay won 1-0. “We achieved it together,” says Tabárez. “It was a task for everyone aiming for the same thing. And when that’s achieved, it makes you stronger.”
“Outsiders don’t count”
Uruguay captain Obdulio Varela’s famous comment before playing the 1950 final against Brazil in the Maracanã doesn’t seem to be just about a game or about football. It was said by someone who not only did not let outside negatives affect him, but also few positives. “Outsiders don’t count”, said Obdulio, and perhaps he wasn’t just talking about those in the stands.
“I want to bring up Obdulio,” I tell Tabárez. “Because he embodied values with his actions. And I believe that ‘outsiders don’t count’ goes beyond a game of football. He showed it in the way he avoided fame and even celebrations …”
“Yes I agree,” the coach replies. “With one caveat: nobody does anything alone. All this process of the national team couldn’t have been done by the footballers and coaches alone. But the Obdulio Varela thing amazes me for the way that each person is a unique reality. And that’s why when we extended the dining room, the two life-sized photographs we put up were of Obdulio and of José Nasazzi [the 1930 World Cup-winning captain].”
“Obdulio’s words tell a great truth,” continues Tabárez, after thinking for a moment. “And I think that, despite all the distance [in time], in the Venezuela game the players gave us an example of that.”
What happened after Venezuela, everyone knows. Uruguay went to the Confederations Cup with renewed confidence and played well. In the qualifiers they beat Peru, Colombia and Argentina, and lost to Ecuador. They went to the play-off and beat Jordan 5-0 in the first leg and drew the second leg in the Centenario stadium. They qualified.
Álvaro “Tata” González recalls what Lugano told his team-mates in the dressing room before going out to face Venezuela in Puerto Ordaz, before that match that could have been the end of the line: “In these moments in which we are playing for so much, in this game which will decide so much, if they let me choose who to play alongside … If they let me choose from the best players in the world … If they let me choose from anyone to go out and fight right now … I don’t have any doubts: I choose you.”
Ana Laura Lissardy is a Uruguayan-Italian journalist and author. This is an edited extract, translated by Chris Taylor, from Vamos que Vamos: Un equipo, un país, featuring life stories of the Uruguay team, with a prologue by Jorge Valdano
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