brian fernandez He is one of those players that football – strictly speaking, its organizers – like to shove under the rug when they don’t score goals. Because when he is centered and on axis he is usually fundamental, but when the opposite happens, nobody knows what to do with him. Except marginalize him from the superior campus or terminate his contract, of course.
The addictions that he confessed accompanied him throughout his life, added to his rebellious spirit that knows of economic and affective deficiencies, shaped a profile that scares most managers. And if football does not cover him when he is off center, Fernández is adrift.
The last months were spent between Caballito and Puerto Madryn. In Ferro, after his departure from Colón, things went on until the absences and acts that football likes to classify in the disciplinary category began. The first opportunity the club had to negotiate it, it did so and so he put on the Deportivo Madryn shirt.
From there he returned with a bow, for the same reasons he had left. But this time the purslane decided to reincorporate it. It didn’t last long. Absences from training closed the door again and the soccer player returned to Santa Fe without too many explanations or certainties about his future.
In that province, this Wednesday, he was arrested for stoning a bus on Santa Fe Avenue and Lieutenant Loza, at the line 5 stop, where he also caused disorder. According to police sources cited by the “Aire de Santa Fe” portal, he was transferred to Police Station 18.
Last week the striker turned 28 and his future as a footballer is unknown. From the first in Defense and Justice he added 10 jerseys. Four were abroad and the periods with the most games played correspond to the second local category, with the colors of Halcón and Ferro.
“The drug ruins you, it leaves you lifeless. I went through hard times, but now I want to play football and be happy. I am with friends and family a lot, containment is essential. The ball heals wounds”, he had declared to the Primer Tiempo program on FM 94.7 in February 2019. These were times of improvement in the life of the striker who had landed in Nexaca, from Mexico, after a year with difficult outings that had led him from Sarmiento de Junín to Metz in France, and from there to Unión La Calera, Chile, to go via the Pacific to the Mexican team.
The sentence in the mouth of Fernández on the negative power of addictions, could lead to the definitive recovery. But not. It was a reflection of someone who recognizes and takes charge of his problems. His sayings, or street riots, work the same way: are an explicit request for help. Before a microphone on a radio, or with stones in the street.
A race against each other
“We wouldn’t have hired Brian if we knew he had that addiction because we don’t want to lose capital. The best thing that can happen to him is to go into the hospital and do rehab.” With that dehumanized reflection, the president of Racing, Víctor Blanco, referred to the sanction for doping that took the striker off the pitch for a year.
It was October 2015 and the dream of consecrating himself at the Academy was fading for Fernández, who at the age of 21 had to stop. “We knew that he came from a humble family with problems -added Blanco-, but the psychological tests were good and that is why we hired him. The family environment and his friends complicate it. His father influenced him quite a bit as well.”
He came from breaking it in Defense and Justice when Racing hired him in 2014. At that time he already arrived with the little sign of conflict due to his problems off the field. But Diego Cocca, who had had him in Varela, tried to shelter him.
The contract with Racing was broken before finalizing it. Two positive anti-doping controls had kept him away from football for a year and a half. He packed his bags and went to Junín to see if in Sarmiento he could enjoy new air and less exposure than in the Academy.
He played five games in Sarmiento, 7 in Metz in France the following year, then 12 in Unión La Calera in Chile, he settled better in Mexico, with 30 games in Necaxa and then he joined the MLS to play in Portland. He had 15 goals in 20 games in the regular phase and the team had qualified for the final stages. Brian decided to stop the ball.
“I asked for help not to fall back into certain things that have happened to me in life. They told me there was a place where I could go. Nothing. I grabbed, I told him yes, that I wanted to go today. And I left. And it was that what happened”, said the forward. The club had masked the striker’s absences by reporting that he was suffering from a stomach virus. But he had decided to voluntarily enter the league’s behavioral health and substance abuse program.
After his shaky stint in MLS, the idea of basing himself at the club he loves and the city he grew up in didn’t pan out for Brian. He only played five games in Colón. And the stay was marked, in addition to the pandemic, by conflicts with members of Eduardo Domínguez’s coaching staff and a new outpatient hospitalization in Buenos Aires to treat his addictions.
Upon his return at the beginning of 2020, he also had problems. Diego Osella, Sabalero’s coach at the time, declared that he had not summoned him due to a “family problem.” But hours later, the player’s family asked the Santa Fe Police for “an undercover whereabouts request” because he did not know where he was. This time, it wasn’t the drugs.
“I woke up from a nap and found this. I can’t go outside, so I don’t have a cell phone,” Brian explained. According to him, it transpired that the player had been threatened with death by his father, a situation for which he spent a week without training, in agreement with Osella. “I didn’t expect to experience something like that with a family member. It’s something very crazy, more coming from a father. It’s a conflict over the shirt,” he said.
Again the change of air and the course mentioned: Caballito (being a fundamental piece to fight for promotion to the Professional League) – Madryn – Caballito, with return to Ferro without glory and the end of the contract that returned him to Santa Fe, where the Police put him in prison on Wednesday for throwing stones at a group.
