He shone in Colón de Santa Fe, directed by Marcelo Bielsa and found relief in writing: the life of César Carignano

The paddock became a place to gain knowledge in the sport. More precisely in football. The manias, the gadgets of a player in a field without grass, with a lot of earth and wells where you have to guess where the ball falls are stages that leave learning. In the particular case of Cesar Carignanoa few years later they would serve as a memory to write his story and with that heal a difficult moment in his career, afflicted by an injury called pubalgia, which left him marginalized from what he loved so much countless times.

In his teens, a friend of his father suggested that he take a test at Columbus of Santa Fe. Still hesitating to leave his Freyre Natal, a small town located in Córdoba, Carignano began to create his destiny based on goals, but also, as he admits in dialogue with THE NATIONwas lucky to be at the right time to score important goals.

The arrival of Ricardo “Tiger” Gareca a Colón It was a balm not only for him, but for a litter of youths who awaited their opportunity in schools with a rich technical and individual quality that postponed them. Engraved in his memory like a medal, the May 13, 2001contra Gymnastics of La Plataof location, Carignano He made his debut in the First Division when he entered the field of play for Diego Castagno Suárez. From there, the road was paved, the goals began to arrive and Marcelo Bielsa laid eyes on himbut, in turn, the injuries -one of the evils that athletes go through- led him to rediscover himself to the point of finding a facet unthinkable at the time.

“Marcelo Bielsa put together the local team in 2003. That’s how I joined a squad that had the base of the champion Independiente, added to Diego Milito, Leo Ponzio, D’Alessandro, Clement Rodriguez, among others. A tour of Central America was organized and I played in three friendlies against Honduras, Mexico and the United States,” said the striker, who at that time had unmistakable blonde hair and wore the number 32 of Colón on his back.

Immersed in the vortex of being in the national team’s clothing, he added some details of what Bielsa meant to him: “The real chip is falling when you think about it; It was a lot of learning, it inspired confidence and, at that time, I had an avant-garde method, ways of training that I had never seen before. He chose a world in which, for the majority, the rod is the result and that is something that was never put above his values.”.

With a career that envisioned having a European destiny, Carignano He kept his feet on the ground and took advantage of those short periods that football provides to get the most out of it: “That period and the year of promotion with Atletico Rafaela (2011) I felt that everything I thought I could do. I wasn’t a self-confident guy, but, at that moment, yes, there were natural circumstances for which it was not difficult for me to convert. I was the second scorer in a tournament, I was summoned to the national team, I did not feel that I was making an extraordinary effort for all thatexcept that everything flowed, it seemed natural and it was difficult for me to size up where I was”.

His irruption in the First of Colón and the citation to the Argentine team gave his last name notoriety. Despite a plateau in performance, where he began to alternate between starter and substitute, the Santa Fe club received an offer from Basel of Swiss for your services. “My explosion came in 2002-2003, then I had a loss like most of the average soccer players have. I had to not play in some sections and, despite not being at my best, Basel’s offer came. I imagined it viable, an important progress and Colón decided to sell me, ”he detailed about the seductive proposal that appeared on the table.

With the pertinent investigations, Carignano arrived in Basel a club recognized by the figure of the tennis player Roger Federer, who is a self-confessed fan and has the colors blue and red on his shirt. In that Swiss club he began to suffer from injuries. The groin pain he became an enemy that was even unknown to the local medical corps. “It’s a tear in the small muscles, they call it hip rotators. It started when I came back from the national team tour, I recovered in time, but I went three years without playing an official match. As soon as I got out of the injury, something tore me up, it was a cursed circuit that left me out for a long time and Paradoxically, it was the time when I found the concern to write”.

At that time, in 2004, without having a record of what was the injury that afflicted him, Carignano He became more of a fan than a player. He traded the area for a box, where Federer once watched Basel matches. “They told me that he was mental and not physical. Me I felt ashamed and even sad to go to the locker room after each game”, he admits, with that touch of melancholy of the player who could not enter the field of play and found a way to “escape” in writing.

In the 2006-2007 season, the European club loaned him to America of Mexico. That was where he received the message from his friend Nicolás, via Messenger, where he jokingly told her to start writing his story: “Reading is something I liked since I was a teenager. When I received that chat I tried to see what came out and It helped me a lot to be well in the headadded to the company of my wife Melisa”.

Another of the emotional pushes he found in the world of football was meeting Ignatius Bogginoa defender with whom he coincided in Patronage, with whom he found a slope outside the limits of the field of play. Together with him, she ventured as a short story author. He, with the writing, and Boggino with the artistic drawings. Going, an autobiography, interspersed with chapters for children, was his first book. With a small circulation, which only included copies for his family and friends, the striker scored his first goal in another category, but without celebrating it in front of the public. “I did not look for transcendence, it was more an internal construction”, he remarked.

With that impulse, he wrote two more books called goal enters y Canito is worth doublemeanwhile, on the green pitch, he rose with Atlético de Rafaela to the First Division, a team where injuries did not exist and recovered that sacred fire to inflate nets.

His last professional club was Belgrano sportsman from San Francisco in 2015, where he coincided with the club’s psychologist, named Julián, who told him in a talk they had, about when to retire, that it was a circumstance that came on its own. It was a sign. “That same night we played against Central Córdoba from Santiago del Estero and I missed an impossible goal. She had her mind elsewhere. I got home after the game and I told my wife that I was leaving the footballbut that I continued until the end of the year out of respect for my colleagues, ”he recalled.

Without a project directly linked to the writing of books, he managed to enter the media in Santa Fe and practiced the profession of journalist by offering his gaze as a qualified opinion. With the desire to reinvent himself again, his father-in-law offered him to join a textile company, where his main job is soccer jersey design.

“The possibility of joining this family project was given and my contribution was based on the theme linked to soccer, to the design for the manufacture of shirts, in the printing of papers for sublimation. It is something that fills me, it does me good and it reminds me of my time as a kid where I liked to draw them, “he said.

Carignano is considered a professional without an acquired title. His concerns took him to the most remote places, where he found a way to face various obstacles that life put him. Today, with the task of, for example, creating jerseys for an amateur soccer team from a league in Santa Fe, reconnects with the paddock, the place where its history began.