The most astonishing penalty kick that I've ever heard of was taken one Sunday afternoon of 1958, in an empty stadium located in some lost spot of the Argentinian Río Negro valley.
Estrella Polar was a club of billiards and card tables, a bar for boozers in a sandy street placed by the river. The club had a football team that used to take part in the valley championship, because there was nothing better to do on Sunday afternoons, when the wind carried the sand and the pollen from out of the ranches.
The players were always the same, or the brothers of the same. When I was fifteen, they should be thirty or so and seemed very old to me. Diaz, the goalkeeper was almost forty and a lock of grey hair was always falling over his Araucanian forehead.
There were sixteen clubs in the championship and Estrella Polar always used to finish below the tenth place. In 1957 they ended in the 13th and after the last game they came back home singing, with their red shirts perfectly folded inside their bags because those were the only ones they had.
In 1958 they started the new season with a win over Escudo Chileno, another club of misery. No one noticed about that. However, one month later, when they had won four games in a row and were leading the tournament, the whole valley started to talk about them. Their wins have been very hard, always by one-nil, but enough to be one point ahead of Deportivo Belgrano, the eternal champion, the club of Padini, Constante Gauna and 'Tata' Cardiles.
Estrella Polar was the main topic in every conversation: at the school, on the bus, in the market place. Everybody in Rio Negro was filling the grounds to watch them lose at last. They were slow as donkeys and heavy as wardrobes, but they used to do man-to-man marking and shouted like stabbed pigs when they had the ball. The coach, a bloke with a black suit, trimmed moustache, mole on the forehead and an everlasting cigarette butt between his lips, used to spend the whole game running along the touchline with a rattan cane, whipping the players up as they passed by his side.
They thrash and were thrashed with such loyalty and enthusiasm that they usually needed to lean on each other when they were leaving the pitch, while the audience was clapping their one-nil victory and holding them bottles of wine cooled within the moist soil. At night they used to celebrate the victory at Santa Ana brothel where fat Leticia was complaining after they'd eaten the chicken she kept inside the fridge. They were the main attraction those days and the village allowed them to do anything they wanted. The old men picked them up when they got drunk and quarrelsome and took them home. Shopkeepers gave them some toys or candies for their children, and when they went to the movies, their girlfriends accepted caresses above their knees.
They lost their first match amid this euphoria in Barda del Medio, and when the first round of the league finished, right after Deportivo Belgrano put them right with seven goals, they were second. Every one of us started to believe that normality was back then. But next Sunday they won again with another 1-0 and kept on with their litany of hard-working, horrible victories; and when they reached the spring days they were only one point behind the leaders.
The final clash was historic because of the penalty.
The stadium was full of people as so were the roofs of the nearby houses. Everybody was expecting Deportivo Belgrano to score again seven goals as they did in the first round match. The day was fresh and sunny and the apples were starting to turn red in the trees.
Estrella Polar brought more than five hundred supporters that assaulted a grandstand, forcing the local firemen to empty their hoses on them until they finally became peaceful.
The referee that called the penalty was Herminio Silva, an epileptic guy who used to sell raffle tickets for the local Club, and everybody considered that he was gambling with his job when in the 40th minute of the second half the result was 1-1 and he still hadn't called a penalty, although the Deportivo Belgrano strikers were diving on the Estrella Polar box, tumbling and juggling to impress him. If the game finished with a draw the locals would still be the champions and as Herminio Silva wanted to keep his self respect safe he was not going to give a penalty if there was no infraction.
But we were all shocked in the 42nd minute, when Estrella Polar left forward nailed a far free-kick into Deportivo Belgrano's net, that put them 2-1 up. Then Herminio Silva thought seriously about his job and lengthened the game until Padín ran inside the Estrella Polar box and just when a defender got a little closer to him, he blew his whistle and gave a penalty. At that time, the penalty spot was not marked with a white circle and it was necessary to count twelve steps of a man. Herminio Silva couldn't even pick the ball to do that because Colo Rivero, the Estrella Polar right back fielder, put him to sleep with a perfect punch. This event started a massive fight that lasted until it got dark, making impossible to clear the field or wake Herminio Silva up. The mayor, shining a lantern, stopped the match and ordered the local policemen to fire into the air. That night, the military command issued a state of emergency or something, and ordered to engage a train to carry away the people who didn't seem to live there.
According to the Rio Negro Valley football league court, which met on Tuesday, there were still twenty seconds left to play after the penalty kick, and that personal match between Constante Gauna, the shooter, and “Gato” Diaz, on goal, would take place the following Sunday in the same stadium, behind closed doors. So this penalty lasted a week and, if anyone doesn’t tell me otherwise, is the longest in history. On Wednesday we missed the school and went to the village to nose around. The club was closed and all the men had gathered on the football court, between the fences. They formed a long line to shoot penalty kicks to Gato Diaz, and the coach with his black suit and mole was trying to explain that this was the best way to train the goalkeeper.
Finally, everybody shot his penalty and Gato saved some because there were people who kicked in sandals or street shoes. A short and silent soldier kicked the ball with his military boot toecap and almost made a hole in the net. By late afternoon they returned to the village, opened the club and began to play cards. Diaz didn’t say a single word, pulling back his gray and hard hair, and then, after eating, he put a toothpick in his mouth and said:
- “Constante kicks to the right”
- “Always” said the president of the club.
- “But he knows that I know it”
- “Then, we are screwed”
- “Yes, but I know that he knows”
- “Then, dive to the left and that’s it” said one of the guys.
- “No. He knows that I know that he knows” and after saying this, he got up and went to sleep.
- “Gato is increasingly strange” said the president watching him slowly walking out.
Gato didn’t train neither Tuesday nor Wednesday. On Thursday, when they found him, he was walking down the railroad tracks, talking to himself and followed by a dog without tail.
- “Are you going to save it?” Asked anxiously the bike shop employee.
- “I don’t know. What would it change in my life?” He asked.
- “It will consecrate us all. We’d kick the ass of those Belgrano fags.”
- “I will consecrate myself when the Ferreyra blonde wants to love me.” He said, and called the dog with a whistling to get back home.
On Friday, the Ferreyra blonde was attending the haberdashery when the mayor entered with a bucket of flowers and a smile wider than an open watermelon.
- “This is sent to you by Gato Diaz, and, until next Monday, you’ll say that he is your boyfriend”.
- “Poor fellow” she said with a grin, and she didn’t even take a glance at the flowers that had come from Neuquén in the 10:30 omnibus.
That evening she and Gato went together to the movies. In the interval he went out to have a smoke and the Ferreyra blonde stayed alone in the half-light with her purse upon her skirt, reading the program one hundred times, without looking up.
That Saturday afternoon, Gato Diaz borrowed two bicycles and they went for a ride to the river banks. Later that afternoon he tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away and said that perhaps she would agree during Sunday evening dancing, after he had saved the penalty kick.
- “And how do I know? He said
- “How do you know what?” She asked
- “What side I have to dive to”
The Ferreyra blonde held his hand and took him where they had left the bikes.
- “In this life nobody knows who is cheating on who” she said
- “ And what happens if I don’t’ save it?” he asked
- “That’ll mean that you don’t love me” answered the blonde, and they came back to the village.
On the penalty Sunday, twenty lorries loaded with people left the Estrella Polar club, but the police stopped them at the edge of Belgrano town and they had to stay on the roadside, waiting in the sun. At that time and place there was no radio, and so, no way to find out what was happening in a closed ground. So the Estrella Polar supporters established a post between the stadium and the road.
The bicycle shop employee climbed onto a roof where he was able to see Gato Diaz’s goal and thence narrating what was happening to another boy who was in the sidewalk, which in turn transmitted to another one who was twenty meters away and so on, until every detail came to where the Estrella Polar fans were waiting.
At three o'clock, both teams went onto the pitch equipped as if they were going to play a game seriously. Herminio Silva wore a black uniform, faded but clean, and when all the players gathered in the center of the court, he went right to where Colo Rivero was and expelled him. The red card hadn’t been invented yet, and Herminio pointed out the entrance of the tunnel with a trembling hand from which his whistle was hanging.
Finally, the police pushed Colo out of the pitch because he wanted to stay to watch the penalty. Then the referee went to the goal line with the ball pressed against his hip, counted twelve steps and put it in place. Gato Diaz had combed his hair with gel and his head was shining like an aluminum pan.
We were watching from the wall that surrounded the field, just behind the goal, and when Gato placed himself on the lime line and began to rub his bare hands, we started to bet to what side Constante Gauna would shoot.
The transit had been cut and the entire Valley was waiting for this moment, as Deportivo Belgrano hadn’t lost a championship in the last ten years. The police also wanted to know, so they let the chain of reporters to be organized along three kilometers. The news would come by word of mouth, spaced only by the shocks of breathing.
Only at half past three, when Herminio Silva finally got the leaders of the two clubs, the coaches and the local power groups out of the pitch, Constant Gauna approached the ball and relocated it. He was thin and muscular and his eyebrows were so thick that seemed to cut his face in two. He had taken that penalty kick so many times -- he told later-- - that he would be kicking it again every moment of his life, no matter if asleep or awake.
A quarter to four, Herminio Silva placed himself halfway between the goal and the ball, took the whistle to his mouth and blew with all his might. He was so nervous and the sun had crushed his head in such a way, that when the ball began its journey to the goal, the referee felt that his eyes turned around, and fell back, foaming at the mouth. Diaz stepped forward and dived to his right. The ball went spinning into the middle of the goal and Constante Gauna immediately knew that Gato Diaz legs would get to just deflect the ball to one side. Gato thought about the dancing, his late glory, and that someone should kick the ball off because it was bouncing in the middle of the six-yard box.
‘Petiso’ Mirabelli came before anyone else and kicked the ball off, against the fence, but the referee Herminio Silva couldn’t see it because he was on the floor, writhing with epilepsy. When the whole Estrella Polar team jumped over Gato Diaz, the linesman ran to Herminio Silva with his flag up, and from the wall where we sat we heard him shouting, "Void, void".
The news spread from mouth to mouth, jubilant: Gato’s save and the fainting of the referee. Then, on the road side, all the Estrella Polar supporters opened their bottles of wine and began to celebrate, although the "void" stammered by the messengers came as a shocked face.
Until Herminio Silva stood up, contorted by the attack, there was no definitive answer. The first thing he asked was "what happened" and when they told him, he shook his head and said that the penalty should be taken again because he had not been there and the rules said that a game cannot be played with an unconscious referee. Then Gato Diaz pushed away those who wanted to beat the Deportivo Belgrano raffles seller and said that they had to hurry because that night he had a date and a promise, and he went again under the crossbar.
Constante Gauna shouldn’t be very confident because he first offered the shot to Padini, and right after that he went to where the ball was, while the linesman helped Herminio Silva to keep standing up. Outside the stadium, honking in celebration could be heard, and Estrella Polar players began to withdraw from the ground surrounded by the police.
The ball came towards the left and Gato Diaz dived to the same side with an elegance and self confidence that he would never have again. Costante Gauna looked at the sky and then began to mourn. We jumped the wall and went to look closely at Diaz, the old, big man, while he was staring at the ball between his hands as if he had found a four-leaf clover.
Two years later, when he was a wreck and I was a brash young man, I met him again twelve steps away, and I saw him huge, crouching on his toes, with his long and open hands. There was a wedding ring in one of his fingers, but it was not from Ferreyra’s blonde but Colo Rivero's sister, who was as Indian and old as him. I avoided making eye contact and changed my leg; then kicked with my left, down, knowing he would not get the ball, because he was a little hard and weighed by the glory. When I went to get the ball into the goal, Gato Diaz was rising like a beaten dog.
'Well, kid,' he said. Someday when you grow old, you’ll go around telling you made a goal to Gato Diaz, but by then nobody will remember me.
