Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Moreno

They called him “El Charro” because he looked like a Mexican movie star, but he was from the countryside upriver of Buenos Aires.

José Manuel Moreno, the most popular player on River’s “Machine,” loved to confound his opponents. His pirate legs would strike out one way but go another, his bandit head would promise a shot at one goalpost and drive it at the other.

Whenever an opponent flattened him with a kick, Moreno would get up by himself and without complaint, and no matter how badly he was hurt he would keep on playing. He was proud, a swaggerer and a scrapper who could punch out the entire enemy stands and his own as well, since his fans, though they adored him, had the nasty habit of insulting him every time River lost.

Lover of good music and good friends, man of the Buenos Aires night, Moreno used to meet the dawn tangled in someone’s tresses or propped up on his elbows on the counter of some café.

“The tango,” he liked to say, “is the best way to train: you maintain a rhythm, then change it when you stride forward, you learn the patterns, you work on your waist and your legs.”

On Sundays at midday before each match, he would devour a big bowl of chicken stew and drain several bottles of red wine. Those in charge at River ordered him to give up his rowdy ways, unbecoming of a professional athlete. He did his best. For an entire week he slept at night and drank nothing but milk. Then he played the worst match of his life. When he went back to carousing, the club suspended him. His teammates went on strike in solidarity with this incorrigible Bohemian, and River had to play nine matches with replacements.

Let’s hear it for partying: Moreno had one of the longest careers in the history of soccer. He played for twenty years in first-division clubs in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, and Colombia. When he returned from Mexico in 1946, River’s fans were so anxious to see his daring thrusts and feints that they overflowed the stadium. His devotees knocked down the fences and invaded the playing field. He scored three goals and they carried him off on their shoulders. In 1952 Nacional in Montevideo made him a juicy offer, but he chose instead to play for another Uruguayan side, Defensor, a small club that could pay him little or nothing, because he had friends there. That year, Moreno stopped Defensor’s decline.

In 1961 after retiring, he became coach of Medellín in Colombia. Medellín was losing a match against Boca Juniors from Argentina, and the players could not make any headway toward the goal. So Moreno, who was then forty-five, got out of his street clothes, took the field, and scored two goals. Medellín won.