Vero Boquete and her brother had a ballthey gave it to him on the condition that, if she didn’t play, he couldn’t either. If she wasn’t on any team, well, the ball was saved for something else and that’s how they learned that, in the backyard, in the park or on the field, whoever has the ball can change things. This is how the footballer from Fiorentina (Italy) recalled it yesterday to questions from Genesis and AmbraFrom inmates of the penitentiary center of Teixeiroand under the watchful eye of approximately two hundred colleagues who broke their routine with an excursion that began in the origins of Vero Boquete playing in Aguiño, which went through China, the United States and Germany, and ended up talking about dreams for the future.
On his first day of Christmas vacation and just a few hours after commenting on the World Cup final for Radio Nacional —a story that kept many of the inmates company who, yesterday, sat in the assembly room— he visited Teixeiro and talked about how he overcame those who told him to study that the football I was not going to give him to live”, about what it is like to leave home, to maintain a competitive mentality when things go wrong and when a decision that has nothing to do with sports performance cuts off the opportunities of athletes to compete in World Cups and Euro Cups, also to fight for a dream, not to give up, to persevere and make an effort to get ahead and to know that she won a lot, but lost more.
Many of those who sat down yesterday to listen to her and watch her touch the ball a few times, some of her experiences are resonant and resonate, especially to Ambra, an inmate who is currently in pretrial detention awaiting trial and who, as a child, had to play soccer “hidden from her parents”, until he got permission to do it on weekends and, over time, and with effort, he became a professional. Things went wrong and ended up in Teixeiro, where, For a few weeks she has been one of the prison team, which competes in the first regional competition of A Coruña, with its federative record, the only one for a woman. It was the director of the center, José Ángel Vázquez, who wrote a letter to the Galician Football Federation to make an exception and allow the young woman to join the futsal team. Finally, the federation relented and now, Ambra says that she has more fans in prison than outside. “It’s not that I don’t want to be here, but I want to get out, play again. What happened to me was a misfortune and hopefully it will be resolved quickly, and that football wins”, said Ambra yesterday, who confessed on the stage of the assembly hall that all the Spanish he speaks he learned by “watching soap operas”. What he lacks for words is to describe what it is like to face a decisive play on the field.
“It is something that is felt throughout the body. It seems to you that you are already winning the world ”, she comments and appeals to that feeling to face the days that remain in prison. “Football has helped me a lot, I thought it would be more difficult for me, but now I have the chance to train with the boys. When I have the ball in my legs I forget about everything. I think a lot about football and although the days are long, between training and my teammates who support me, I get along better”, Ambra is sincere, who wants to continue playing football so as not to lose the common thread of her life before, during and after Teixeiro.
He also spoke about the future Vero Boquete, who, after having gone through fourteen clubs in eight countries, would like to retire “at home”and, for now, he admits, he could only do that at Dépor, but his dreams do not end there, wants to be a men’s soccer coach and, if possible, “not the first”because that will mean that others have gone ahead, opening the way and “breaking ceilings”.
When Vero Boquete arrived at the penitentiary center yesterday, several inmates already had their mats packed, there were relatives at the door and faces of joy for making the reverse path to the one they had followed long ago. All of them left the prison to settle in the Social Insertion Center. She, like them, also left with her hands full, first, with the certainty that, thanks to her, in prison “comrades no longer change the channel when they show women’s soccer on television,” because Génesis, the inmate in charge to do the interview, he assured him; second, with a pen portrait made by one of the prisoners; with pieces of crafts that they made in the workshops and with the gift of advice that “You can always get ahead.” She knows it and in Teixeiro too.
