LOS ANGELES – Ricardo Ferretti and Nacho Ambriz. Scattered roads. They are united only, and only perhaps, by Goethe’s gleeful lament: “Be careful what you learn (and love) that you won’t be able to forget it.”
One, he could be gone forever and live in the pure hedonism of memories and wealth. The accurate breeze of flattery. What does Tuca Ferretti still lack that football can still give him?
Another could have stayed and began to harvest those wounded fruits, after painful sowings, in search of new harvests for the unpredictable winters, with memories and riches. How long does Nacho Ambriz have to give and claim football?
Ricardo Ferretti ventures with Bravos de Juárez. He escapes from the aromatic victory of the Tigres trophy room. You will get paid less and you will have to work more. At 67 years old, with a brand new pelvis, like a reggaeton schoolgirl, soccer is passion and the muse of competitive lust.
Nacho Ambriz brought up laurels, flattery, pleas, flirtations of unusual amounts of dollars in the basement. The Pedro Navajas of Liga Mx snubbing the seductive sequins of various clubs. Choose the Sociedad Deportiva Huesca, there in Aragon, Spain. In the Second Division. He (56 years old) and an almost contemporary club (61 years old). Thelma and Louise.
Yes, one could have settled in with suntan lotion, caipirinhas, and the incense of epic days in Copacabana. And the other, to milk some of the opulent, anxious and desperate cows of the Liga Mx, or to wink at Qatar 2022, from the Costa Rican bench.
But not. Ricardo Ferretti and his red Ferrari returned to sweat the burning furrow of the field laborer. The written pages are not enough for him, when he finds himself exasperated by those damn dazzlingly white pages eager for narratives.
And Nacho Ambriz abandons the emerald empire in León to, tooth and nail, try to build what, in Huesca itself, they do not even imagine can be built. For years, his best business card had an annoying caption: “Auxiliar de Javier Aguirre.” Today, it reads, “champion with a splendid Lion.” You don’t need more of that “El Vasco” bule.
Why does one take refuge in discomfort and why does another flee from comforts? Perhaps you both know that comfort is the eve of death.
Perhaps Miguel Hernández describes it better than anyone: “This ray neither ceases nor runs out: it took its source from myself, and exercises its fury in myself.”
Soccer inoculates. And when paired with victory, with the exciting euphemism of glory, these guys, these characters, generally become living relics of their own ambitions.
What are Tuca and Ambriz looking for? Without a doubt, it is the challenging mystery about his own abilities. Show, both, that they are better technicians than their immediate versions in Tigres and León. Maybe yes, maybe no. But what is truly important is that they maintain the anxious and ever-current din of “this ray (that) neither ceases nor runs out.”
How many more like them? Perhaps Javier Aguirre would quote Homero: “Let me not die without glory and without struggle, but first let me do something great that will be counted among men in the afterlife.” Yes, although the beyond, that beyond, is something so sterile in daring and adventurers, as the Liga Mx.