Montevideo, Aug 29 (EFE).- Thousands of people attended the wake of Uruguayan Nacional footballer Juan Manuel Izquierdo, who died on Tuesday in the city of São Paulo after spending five days in hospital.
Fans of various teams gathered outside the Tricolor team’s headquarters, where the family and the club said goodbye to the player who lost his life at the age of 27 due to brain death following a cardiorespiratory arrest.
Flags of Nacional and Peñarol, as well as shirts of these teams and others such as Liverpool and Fénix were part of a place where those who attended left dozens of posters with messages and hundreds of bouquets of flowers.
During the two hours that the wake was open to the public, hundreds of fans entered the venue to say goodbye to Izquierdo, while many others were unable to do so and showed their respects from 8 de Octubre Avenue, which was closed off.
“I am left with the civic response of the Uruguayan people, who are responding as all good Uruguayans want, supporting this family. I am very hurt, devastated, but I cannot even begin to put myself in the shoes of the family that is the most affected,” the president of Nacional, Alejandro Balbi, told the press.
On the other hand, he thanked the presence of players and managers from the different teams and emphasized the arrival of a delegation of footballers from the Brazilian São Paulo, the club that the Tricolor faced last Thursday in the Copa Libertadores.
Argentines Jonathan Calleri and Luciano Galoppo, Uruguayan Michel Araújo and Brazilians Rapinha and Welington traveled on Wednesday night to Montevideo to bid farewell to the man who collapsed a week ago in the stadium of the São Paulo team and had to be taken away in an ambulance.
Meanwhile, the president of the Uruguayan Football Association, Ignacio Alonso, expressed his displeasure at what he considered an injustice and said that the governing body of football had already put itself at the service of the player’s family.
“Life goes on and unfortunately a family is left devastated. A widowed woman with a lot of things to deal with at an early age, where life is generally seen from a different perspective, and two little ones who need a lot of support and containment,” he said.
Towards the end of the wake, the historic leader of Nacional, Hernán Navascués, recalled that he had had to say goodbye several times to people who had “a significant life at the service of the club” and assured that he had never experienced a moment as painful as the one on Thursday.
During a brief speech, he remembered the brothers Carlos and Bolivar Céspedes, who died of smallpox in 1905, and Diego Rodríguez, who died at the age of 22 on September 11, 2010, two days after suffering a traffic accident in the Uruguayan capital.
He also spoke about the historic Abdon Porte, who died on March 5, 1918. At 25 years old, the player took his own life on the field of the Gran Parque Central stadium due to a knee injury that had taken his place in the team and kept him away from football.
Minutes after Navascués spoke and the family said goodbye to Izquierdo, the footballer’s coffin was transferred to a hearse waiting at the door of the headquarters.
The silence that reigned at that moment was broken by the sound of applause from thousands of fans, who immediately began singing a song from the Nacional fans.
“Not even death will separate us, I will cheer you on from heaven,” chanted the fans on a painful day for world football.
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2024-08-31 13:58:08
