Luis Diaz? We all went to the field to see it”

Luis Díaz has been one of the sensations of the season in the Premier League, despite having landed in January from Porto. Only 5 months have been enough for the Colombian to gain a foothold in the starting eleven, even displacing Diogo Jota in many games, and in the hearts of many ‘network’ fans. Thus, Daily Mail has decided to go to Barranquilla to discover the origins of the striker in the days before his first Champions League final.

“Luis Díaz came to try. There were 3,000 players, but all we could see was Luis. It was the speed of him, the speed and technicality of his game. It was his mentality: practice, practice, practice. He was very humble, but he was clearly very special.”, explains Francisco Sánchez, director of Barranquilla FC, a club in which the Colombian became known as a footballer and in which he surprised from his arrival, not only because of the ways he pointed out, but also because of his personality.

“‘Lucho’ always had a smile on his face when he trained because football is easy for him. From the first day I saw Luis, I could see that he was very skilled and that he could dribble players. But he was individualistic. He learned very quickly. Luis’ best quality is his ability to adapt”, says Arturo Reyes, coach of the first team and who coincided with the Liverpool player when he was not yet a coach, but an assistant.

“Everyone wants to be Luis Díaz”

Another of those who clearly remembers the expectations generated by his arrival is Fernel Díaz, now director of the club’s lower categories, but who at that time was not part of the entity. “Luis was 18 years old when he arrived here. A coach named Juan Carlos Cantillo began to tell people that a very special player had come, so we all headed to the field to see it. He was very skilled, he loved to haggle. He was skinny, very thin, but he was also tall and strong. But above all he showed that he could beat people. What he is showing at Liverpool he showed here from day one”, assures Diaz.

The person in charge of the base football of Barranquilla has also spoken about the Champions League final that is played on Saturday. “It’s going to be crazy. We can not wait. All the places where you can see the game here are going to be full. And everyone in Barranquilla is going to support Liverpool. There are many Madrid fans in Colombia, but I think everyone will go to Liverpool for Luis.. The fact that he got out of here is an inspiration to all the kids who come after him. Everyone wants to be Luis Diaz”, he concludes.

“We said that he was going to die”

Luis Manuel Díaz, father of the striker, has also spoken for the Colombian chain RCN news about his son’s beginnings in football after overcoming health problems that put his life at risk. “When he was little, 2 or 3 years old, he was chubby, he was very chubby. She had a disease process, it gave her a malaise and she lost weight in that process. We used to say that she was going to die, because As the old people from before who kept an eye on him used to say: ‘the bald guy got sick, he got sick’”, Explain. It was a person from his community who helped Luis Díaz to recover his health, “a man from up here was the one who helped me with him and recovered him.”

These health problems did not stop the passion of the striker, who began at a very young age to impress with the ball at his feet. “The bald guy at four years old already handled many skills, he had the ability to kick the ball,” says his father. However, his thinness almost caused him to miss out on a South American Under-20 tournament. “In a moment, the concept of the medical part made us feel that Luis Díaz could not be in the South Americanthat he was a man who was physically very handicapped, who had suffered from malnutrition, who that influenced enduring the nine games”, he explained to Blue Radio his first coach in the Colombian national team, ‘Piscis’ Restrepo. However, he was not influenced. “I met with the coaching staff and I felt, because of what Luis was, because of his ability, that he should be there, even if it was to close games in the South American tournament in Ecuador”, he concluded.