2023-08-14 06:52:16
“San Lorenzo fans always recognize me and I will be grateful to them for life, because it was a blessing to spend five years at that club. Having achieved the Clausura 95 was beautiful, because to this day they let me know and it is something very comforting. Every time I come across one of them, they speak wonders to me, they hug me and they are things that fill my soul”.
In his words they inhabit the same clarity as when he played. Fernando Galetto dazzled by his category with the ball at his feet, planting himself in the middle of the field and talentedly watering every inch of the field. From that school of fine and elegant central midfielders, from the soccer family of Claudio Marangoni and Fernando Redondo, to cite just two cases. Grateful for every moment lived, he passionately reviewed his career.
“After having started at Club Atlético El Carmen, in my town, Monte Cristo, at almost 18 years old, I went to try Racing de Córdoba and stayed there. I started in the Fourth Division, went through the Reserves the following season and when I turned 20 I was lucky to make my debut. After the glorious decade of the ’80s, when he was in the First Division, the team played in Nacional B and my first match was at the Atlético de Rafaela stadium, in a two-goal tie. It was a classic Ascent tournament, very rough (laughs), but I quickly got used to that style”.
That of 1991/92 was an acceptable season for Racing de Córdoba, which was left out of the Reduced Tournament for the second promotion by just one point. Of the entire squad, the most prominent was Fernando Galetto, whom Talleres immediately appointed as one of his reinforcements: “Pato Pastoriza, who was the coach, asked me. He had a huge personality, a lot of street, charismatic and arrived with the players, so he knew how to lead the group very well. Football was in his blood and he was a great person. I joined a good team that, among others, included Mario Bevilacqua and the Keing Tank. I found a different world when playing in First Division. The problem was that we had the sword of relegation on our heads all the time due to the drag of the average of the previous seasons and we had to make almost a campaign to fight for the title to save ourselves. It was a heavy backpack and we ended up descending, with a memorable match with River at the Mario Kempes stadium, with Javier Castrilli as referee, which was a scandal”.
Galetto makes an interesting analysis, focusing on something that is rarely talked regarding in general and it is how the player goes through his daily life, when he is in a situation of so much tension: “I continued living in my town, where the majority were very soccer fans and wanted to talk every day. For me it was very hard, because the wheel never stopped. I had to organize my times well to be able to have a quiet time, because perhaps I would cross the street to make a purchase, and you would meet an acquaintance who would immediately bring up the subject, which for me was complex due to the situation we were going through. It wasn’t that people had a bad vibe, quite the opposite, but the question immediately arose as to what was happening, because Talleres was like that, etc. It broke my head having to explain myself, because I mightn’t turn my face away, since it was a town where we had known each other forever. My life was simple, going to the bar to play cards and I had to stop doing it, because when I arrived, what was I going to talk regarding, tennis? (laughs). No, they were talking regarding football”.
San Lorenzo team champion of the Clausura 1995: Passet; Escudero, Arevalo, Ruggeri, Manusovich; Monserrat, Galetto, Netto; Silas; Biaggio and Gonzalez
The Talleres ship had been shipwrecked in the midst of leadership mismanagement and an average that suffocated until the end. However, Fernando Galetto survived there, whose class in handling the ball was seen far beyond Córdoba: “In mid-1993 I arrived in Lanús, where Miguel Ángel Russo was the coach, who, in a talk, told me that he they had been following each other since we had met two years earlier in Nacional B. I found myself with an orderly and serious institution, in the middle of a completely different world for me, what it was like to have to live in a monster like Buenos Aires (laughs). It wasn’t easy at first, when more than once you ask yourself ‘what am I doing here?’. In terms of sport it was spectacular, with the addition that, in that first tournament, the Apertura, we had a great campaign, with teammates with whom we put together a great team like Néstor Fabbri, Gabriel Schurrer, Marcelo Ojeda in goal, a lethal scorer like the Pampas Gambier. We fought for the title and for me it meant the other extreme, following what had happened with Talleres”.
At the end of that season, in which Fernando stood out as one of the best in the always competitive position of central midfielder, he went up one more rung on the imaginary ladder of his career, when a great person appeared to hire him: “Getting to San Lorenzo was a huge and wonderful jump. I immediately felt the pressure of an institution that had not been a champion for 20 years. I was part of an unforgettable team, which in the first tournament it played, the Apertura 94, had good performances, but the title went to River led by Tolo Gallego, who was undefeated. I was lucky enough to score a goal in the first clásico I played and which also gave us victory on the Huracán pitch. And left-handed, so the boys still charge me (laughs). It was a blessing, because honestly, I got it off me with that leg and pinned it to the side of the stick. We were aware that we were close and it was given to us in the next one ”.
That 1995 Clausura was one of the most celebrated conquests by a fan in the contemporary history of Argentine soccer. A yellowish patina decorated the pages of the last San Lorenzo title, back in 1974. In between, not only 21 years had passed, but also the loss of the historic Gasómetro de Avenida La Plata and the painful decline. But there was the loyalty of those people who never let up, becoming a mainstay: “That Sunday when we came out champions on the Rosario Central field, I am still moved by many things, such as the memory of seeing the enormous number of people who accompanied us. . There was tension in the previous one, which loosened a bit when it started. Cabezón Ruggeri yelled at the rival strikers “stop running and stinging, they’re going to drive me crazy” (laughs). We had a penalty in our favor that Javier Netto shot over the crossbar and there it was impossible not to think regarding what had happened in the previous tournament, when we were very close and it got away from us. However, we were convinced, very strong in the head and we kept pushing forward, until Gallego González’s goal came that gave us the title, added to the defeat of Gimnasia on their home court once morest Independiente. I remember that Tinelli got on the field and behind him, a crowd. I don’t have any more images of emotion, until the next one, which is being almost naked on the shoulders of a person I didn’t know, doing an Olympic lap. A plus that we had was that Tinelli did a program that the whole world watched and he harangued non-stop. There was a sum of things that made that Clausura 95 unforgettable. To this day, many fans from other clubs still remind me of that. I am grateful to life for having been able to be part of that moment”.
First he had his field in Santiago del Estero and then he invested in Monte Cristo, Córdoba
A man of the house, identified with the colors as few in history, like Bambino Veira, was much more than the coach who restored Boedo to glory. The supporters felt it that way and the players too: “It was a crazy thing, a total divine that I always remember with a smile. A great character, in the style of Pastoriza or Coco Basile, with well-understood codes. In their lives they had done everything and that is why they knew how to handle a team perfectly. The Bambino was a monster with whom we lived thousands of anecdotes, but one stuck with me: it was during a training session at the Nuevo Gasómetro, where he went to sit alone in the open stalls. The night before he had brought me together with some friends to play cards and he had an unforgettable morning, heavy, standing still, without reaction (laughs). Nothing came of anything, until a moment the practice stopped and from there he yelled with his unmistakable voice: “Galetto: you’re having a birthday!” With the stadium empty, he rumbled a lot and I blushed (laughs). He was an extraordinary motivator, who knew how to change the course of a game at halftime, with the well-known system of throwing five towels on the locker room floor to mark our positions. We were convinced and we believed in him.”
His rising performance was incessant, from that debut with the Racing de Córdoba jersey, reaching the top with the consecration in San Lorenzo. Daniel Passarella had been the National Team’s technical director for a year and he set his eyes on him in the unforgettable 1995: “I felt that I had been doing well and towards the end of the year I received the summons to play a friendly once morest Venezuela in Mendoza, with a majority of footballers from the local medium. It was a unique and beautiful experience, because wearing that shirt is a kid’s dream. I was very happy at that stage, because I had other calls with Passarella, who was very cool with me. I immediately realized his personality and that he was correct in the sense that when it was necessary to work, he did it fully and the same when it was time to relax, when he joined us in chatting or playing games. cards. His line of thought was clearly lowered ”.
As if all the emotions that Fernando Galetto went through in 1995 had not been enough, there was another one that shook him, both personally and professionally, and it was the fact that he had to face, and score, Diego Armando Maradona on his return to Boca Juniors: “It was something wonderful. A few days following his return to football, we went to La Bombonera, which was bursting. He was a showman with that yellow streak in his hair. In the preview I thought: ‘We sound, what do I do with it?’ (laughs). I remember that he made a pipe for me regarding three meters away. I thought he was going to make a pass and I was left there, with my knees colliding (laughs). I was never one to hit, although that day I scratched it a little and he yelled at me ‘stop, Galetto, stop’, and I replied ‘what do you want me to do, how do you want me to stop you?’. Luckily the photographers took a lot that followingnoon, where you can see me with him, because I didn’t want to ask him for one before starting, so as not to bother him, but following the years I regretted it. He was one of a kind. I don’t know if at that moment I took an exact dimension of what he was experiencing, due to the maelstrom in which we are immersed. I feel like I was privileged.”
That highly assembled team from San Lorenzo reached the quarterfinals of the 1996 Copa Libertadores, losing to River Plate, who would later be the champion. As a matter of logic, then the performance began to diminish and the departure of Veira left the squad a bit orphaned. Several trainers passed, but the level never returned to those glorious days. In mid-1999, the time for the exodus also came to Galetto: “I received the offer to go to Panathinaikos in Greece and honestly, at first it was very hard, above all because of the language issue, because I didn’t understand anything. It was very cruel to spend several days without being able to talk to anyone. I learned Greek like the Indians (laughs), like when we watched the movies ‘I want fruit’. Something like that. I was very lost and thought ‘who sent me here?’ Over time, I found out that the person who had taken me was the president and owner of the club, the coach never gave the OK. He put me in the first games and as soon as he might, he sent me to the bench. Perhaps he was acting in the Greek Cup, but without continuity. After six months I wanted to go back, but slowly I got used to it, thanks to the passion that the Greeks have for football, in that sense, very similar to us. Then I had the chance to play in the Champions League, which was a unique experience in every way”.
Diego Maradona greets the people of Boca with Fernando Galetto behind as a spectator
The contract with Panathinaikos ended following three years and with the pass in his possession, Fernando began to analyze different possibilities, until he decided on an exotic destination with an unexpected ending: “I met a businessman in a hotel in Athens to go to Cyprus. We arranged all the details, which we left written and signed on a sheet, so that he might present it to the board of directors. I came to Argentina and my representative told me that Professor Córdoba, whom I knew from the days when he was Miguel Russo’s physical trainer, wanted to take me to Lanús. It was an idea that seduced me, because every time I came on vacation, it was very difficult for me to return. The issue was that there was a big mess, since a man came from Cyprus to tell me that he had arranged everything with them, when all he had done was sign a paper from the hotel. It was a hell of a mess that he managed to get unstuck. Since I hadn’t had great continuity in Greece, I paid dearly for it in our football, because I lacked rhythm. In Lanús I had a four-year contract and following six months I rescinded. The wheel had locked up and Buenos Aires, in that 2002, was burning everywhere. We weren’t having a good time with my wife, we came to Córdoba and I decided not to play anymore”.
The desire was over. That invisible motor said enough in the mind of Fernando, who settled in his town. However, he made an attempt to come back, in Racing de Córdoba, at the insistence of Diablo Monserrat, who acted there, but there were only a handful of games in the 2004/05 season of the National B. From there came the new life, more attached to the family, with his wife María José and his children Guadalupe, Juan Pablo and Luisina. But he was already preparing for the day following: “There was always the idea of having fields as an investment while I was playing, looking for the most secure future possible. While I was working, my dad was looking for a field. The first was in the town of Bandera in Santiago del Estero, where we had it for two years, until we sold it and bought the current one, seven kilometers from the city of Monte Cristo. There was no tradition in us in this regard, because my old man worked with the farm, but not on the land, that is why we aimed at a safe investment. From the beginning we had animal husbandry, mainly pigs, but without a large production, it is something smaller and homemade. At present, all the land is leased and there are regarding five hectares with a park, where we have the hull. At the beginning I went a lot more and now I do it less, only if they need me for something specific. It is a beautiful place, like a ground wire that I enjoy a lot with the family, because we also celebrated my daughter’s 15th birthday there.”
The vice of number five stands out with friends at the San Martín club, where they played the UCFA (Cordobe Amateur Football Union) tournament, although without watching much football (“little and nothing on television”). This is how Fernando Galetto enjoys his days, in his beloved town of Monte Cristo. That one that helped the nickname that suited him perfectly, because with his dapper game and good treatment of the ball, he was an indisputable Count of the midfield.
He invested in the field looking for “a future as secure as possible”
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He was the best player in a Libertadores, he taught Neymar to take a free kick, but he suffered in San Lorenzo: “It was the most frustrating thing in my career”
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