Diego Forlán pauses, as though he still struggles to comprehend the reach and clout of his family’s footballing dynasty. The Uruguay striker’s father, Pablo, represented La Celeste and so did his grandfather, Juan Carlos Corazzo.
“Between us, we have won four Copa Américas,” Forlán says. “But what is more interesting is that it is my maternal grandfather. It’s the father of my mother, not the father of my father, so it’s more difficult to get that.
“My father played when my grandfather was the coach. Before, my grandfather won one Copa América. Then, they won another as a coach and player and, with mine [in 2011], that’s four. In the history of football, there’s no chance to get that in a family.”
It is no exaggeration to say that Forlán has lived and breathed the values of the Uruguay team since the cradle. The 35-year-old talks with pride about what it was like to grow up with a famous father. “Whenever I was with him, people would say: ‘Look, there’s Forlán’s son,” he says. Forlán adds that he looks forward to the day when he has a son of his own and he can tell him about the tradition. No pressure on that boy, then …
Forlán, though, can make the case for being his family’s brightest star. The only Uruguayan in history to have passed 100 caps, he was named as the best player at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, in which Uruguay were beaten semi-finalists, to follow South American greats such as Diego Maradona, Romário and Ronaldo in winning the award.
Forlán has 36 international goals – only Luis Suárez, with 38, has more for Uruguay – while in his club career he has twice won the European Golden Boot, with Villarreal in 2004-05 – when he shared it with Thierry Henry, then of Arsenal – and with Atlético Madrid in 2008-09. He is still scoring for Cerezo Osaka in Japan’s J-League, where he moved in January, the latest stop in a journey that has taken in Uruguay, France, Argentina, England, Spain, Italy and Brazil.
It is what lies ahead that quickens Forlán’s pulse. The most seasoned member of Óscar Tabárez’s seasoned squad – Forlán is the only survivor from the 2002 World Cup finals, in which Uruguay narrowly failed to emerge from the group phase – he had originally been considered as a high-calibre back-up this year for the starting strikers, Luis Suárez and Edinson Cavani.
But Suárez’s knee injury has changed the dynamic and Forlán is primed to win his 111th cap as a starter in Saturday’s Group D opener against Costa Rica. He is ready, having prepared in the same way that he did before the last World Cup, when he was the joint-top scorer. He has been up at 6am every day to work with his personal trainer of 10 years, Santiago Alfaro, before linking up with his team-mates for their sessions. Alfaro is with him in Brazil.
“Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, my former Manchester United team-mate, once told me that I train harder than any player he’s played with,” Forlán says, and the dedication, the determination to show that his best years are not behind him, is plain.
The pressure is on. “It’s different when you get results,” Forlán says, with a nod towards South Africa and the 2011 Copa América, when his two goals helped Uruguay to a 3-0 win over Paraguay in the final and a record 15th South American title. “The people start seeing you in another way.
“Uruguay is a small country but with a lot of football history. We’ve won so many things and so the people are always expecting us to do good things. But with what has happened over the last four years, they are expecting a lot. The Uruguayan people expect us to do better than we did at the last World Cup.”
It is remarkable how a nation of a little over three million people can be such a power in South America and beyond, and Forlán attributes the successes, which have included the World Cup victories of 1930 and 1950, to what the Uruguayans call la garra. The country has always produced good players but it is this fight-to-the-death commitment and hardness that defines them, and can help to bridge the gap to the bigger nations. La garra was cited as the main reason for the 1950 triumph over Brazil in Brazil.
“It’s like when you don’t have that last breath but you always want to give more,” Forlán says. “Sometimes, in the last minute, against big teams … you never expect you have the chance to win but there is that garra that everyone talks about.”
Forlán is the thinking man’s footballer. Fluent in five languages, he has tackled a sixth since the move to Japan, where he is the league’s highest-profile player. He chose to embrace the challenge, partly, because he loves new experiences and he has found the culture shock to be stimulating.
“I’ve seen the film Lost in Translation,” Forlán says, with a smile, and it is probably fair to say that he sticks out on the street. More smiles. “You have to be a little bit calmer sometimes if you want to go out. “It’s OK.
“I am speaking a little bit of Japanese, which is not that easy but I’m trying. There are not so many people that speak English but I like to speak the native language. When I had the chance to join United in England [in January 2002], I started to communicate straight away. It makes a big difference.
“I’d never thought of going to Japan but the J-League came to me and I could see that they wanted me to be part of the project. In the beginning, they said: ‘We have two or three teams for you, although we cannot say which ones at the moment but we want you as a player, as everything.’ Everything is nice over there; the football, the stadiums, the city. The people are very respectful, very kind.”
Forlán’s easy-going charm ensures that he is well-liked wherever he goes. At United, where he spent two and a half seasons, he was always popular, if not exactly prolific. He had to wait 27 games for his first goal – a Champions League penalty against Maccabi Haifa – and his lack of chemistry with Ruud van Nistelrooy was a problem.
He did, though, score some vital goals, as Sir Alex Ferguson remembered in his autobiography – a double in a 2-1 victory at Liverpool and a last-minute winner against Chelsea.
“Sir Alex sent me a signed copy of his book,” Forlán says. “He said some really nice things about me in it, both as a player and a person. I have some friends in common with Sir Alex and I speak with his brother sometimes, and some other people. I’ve kept in contact with Phil Neville and I have really good relationships with all the people.”
The view on Forlán from England is slightly skewed by his spell at United and he admits it will be “strange” to face Roy Hodgson’s team in the second group fixture. “But it’s also nice, playing big teams,” Forlán adds. “When the draw was made and it was England, Italy … I said: ‘Well, you have to play against good teams.’ I know it’s going to be difficult for us but I also know it’s going to be difficult for them.”
