When he played in Colón de Santa Fe, Diego summoned him to play the 2010 World Cup in South Africa with the Argentine National Team and the former footballer left several revelations about that World Cup.
“Garcé brings alfajores”was the legend of one of the most remembered Argentine flags during the World Cup in South Africa 2010. is that when Diego Armando Maradona announced the list of 23 soccer players who would seek the World Cup dream of the Argentine National Team in African lands the name of Ariel Garce caught the attention of locals and strangers. At that time, the former right back was playing in Colón de Santa Fe and although he had been part of some local friendlies, his presence was a surprise. The former soccer player spoke about that and much more: the myth of the dream that took him to the World Cup, his prejudices about Diego and more.
Ariel Garcé, without filter: the myth of the dream and its prejudices about Maradona
“I tell him ‘Juana (his daughter) don’t say anything else, Messi doesn’t even join me'”, The former soccer player released in the first instance in dialogue with the La Selecta podcast when he explained that he is ashamed that his daughter tells all her schoolmates that her father played with the best soccer player in the world.
Then, recalling those years and delving into the memories, he recalled sensations and feelings that challenged him when he was summoned for the first time to Maradona’s Argentine National Team to play a friendly against Haiti: “I didn’t like Maradona or Grondona so well, Diego generated admiration for me but in his last part, I didn’t like his way of participating in different things in society. When I met him I had to put down all that of mine so I could be free and not judge him based on what I had seen or heard. I arrived with a plan to treat Diego as if he were a father or a brother. And one of the things for which we connected with Diego was that: the good vibes he had, but speaking energetically. It’s like energetically those guys are somewhere else, it’s not something magical, but they have something else.
And he went on to explain: “When I saw him, I gave him a hug as if he were a guy I hadn’t seen in a long time and the crazy guy stayed and from then on he trusted what he had felt in me,” to then argue about his point of view of the reason for his call to the World Cup so questioned: “I went to enjoy myself and always had that good vibe. And I enjoyed it. That’s why I went to the World Cup. Firstly because I played and did a lot of things that were up to the task for me and then because of all this, for preparing myself, giving myself and truly making all my judgments towards whoever was there”.
Without dodging any questions, Garcé referred to the striking myth that indicated Maradona took him to South Africa just because one night he dreamed that he was lifting the gold medal: I listened to it a lot, but It’s like they tell me that colon came out champion because I got the virgin 10 years before. It’s like the players haven’t done anything. This is like a plan to run from focus to all those things. I don’t know if it’s true, all that favored me, I never talked to Diego about it. It was all so fast and strong. I would tell you that it could have happened, but I don’t know.”held.
Garcé’s escapes to the Fan Fest with friends and the frustration in the match against Greece
The former top scorer revealed that he “escaped” from the national team concentrations in Pretoria to go see his friends, for whom he had to process 19 passports: “I was going to the Fan Fest with my friends and I would walk back and the security wouldn’t let me pass, they didn’t believe I was a player. I told them ‘look at the list, I’m there'”.
Finally, he exposed all his personal frustration at not being able to jump onto the green grass for a single minute of that World Cup and confessed that in the match against Greece he warmed up for approximately 72 minutes: “In the Greece match, I generated expectations because Diego took me out to warm up at minute 0 and I warmed up for 72 minutes and when he made the third substitution and Palermo entered, I arrived at the bench defeated”, he remembered. “In the locker room after the game (Argentina won 2-0) they were all celebrating and I said ‘what a shit, I’m not playing anymore’. I didn’t get mad at anyone, but ok. From the first minute you warm up to enter. I played a game back there and I never got in, I felt like I was defeated or frustrated”.
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