Uruguayan football mourns the death of Fabián O’Neill, an exquisite hitch that shone in the league of his country and in Italy. According to local chronicles, the 49-year-old soccer player was hospitalized in the last days in the city of Montevideo. His cause of death was chronic cirrhosis.
Nacional, via Twitter, recalled one of the footballers most loved by his fans: “Today the 10 shirt cries. Today the magic stops to remember Fabián O’Neill, one of the players who aroused the most admiration with the Nacional shirt One of ours left. Goodbye Wizard”.
O’Nielll had started his career at Nacional. His biography in newspapers and magazines places his birth in Paso de los Toros, a small Uruguayan city in the municipality of Durazno. And before reaching the HandbagHis childhood was no stranger to that of many deprived children: abandoned parents, the street and the pasture were his second homes, because the first was his grandmother’s house, who came to the rescue of little Fabián.
The Wizard -a nickname that is only reserved for some crack youngsters- did not last very long in South American football, after the dribbling that he scattered through the Great Central Park: the European teams had already set their eyes on him. jug. Being little more than a teenager he left for Italy, where he had the best performance of his. In total there were eight years, scattered in Cagliari (1996-2000 and 2002), Juventus (2000-2001) and Perugia (2002).
On his way through the Vecchia Signora coincided on campus with a certain Zidene Zidane, another magician of the ball. The Frenchman had just been champion with his team in 1998 and already had a Ballon d’Or in his closet. And despite his fame, his closeness to other elite players and, above all, his quality on the pitch, when he They asked Zizou if he had shared the field with another player better than him, at that time, the 10 did not doubt: “O’Niell,” was his reply.
In those years he shone not only for his punch and assists, but for the luxuries he threw against the most seasoned midfielders in Calcio. And there, a little story that is now repeated as a soccer myth: in a match against Salernitana, the midfielder had promised his Uruguayan teammates that I was going to throw three pipes at him! to Genaro Gatusso, a five that had nothing subtle. The reason? Nothing more than the pleasure of ridiculing a prototype of the catenaccio. The video shows that the Wizard did not disappoint in his prediction.
O’Niell was not without controversy, either.. Since he was a boy, he suffered problems with addictions -especially alcohol- which led to problems with his teams and with the national team itself. He was part of the arrangement for Cagliari to be promoted to the first division. It was the last date of Serie B and with a draw against his rival he achieved promotion. This is how he tells it: “I fixed it. I went and spoke with their captain, we even played the supermatch all to the draw. At 87 minutes a player of ours scored a goal and we got 2 to 1. He hits him from half the field and put it in the angle, 2 to 1 and we had fixed the tie. Then he shouted to Diego López (also Uruguayan) ‘boludo, let yourself score a goal or if they don’t kill us all’. And Diego went and lost a ball and they make it two for two”. Of those anecdodes, thousands, that follow one another in the biography To the last drop.
He participated in the 20202 World Cup with La Celeste, but on the 10th he did not step on the grass for a minute and Víctor Púa’s team was left out in the first round, after a very rare 3-3 against Senegal.
His time in Italy left him great goals, luxuries and a large bank account. But his stardom was fleeting and in recent years, the memory of his colorful game only remained in the memory of a few fans, the vast majority of them Charrúas. And of the money, not a trace. In an interview for the “Ovation” portal, the flyer recounted the events that led him to waste around 14 million dollars. “It doesn’t bother me to be poor,” he said.
Despite a dire situation at the time, O’Neill said he was comfortable with the way he lived. “It is better to be like this than to have money. I had a lot of money and I had millions of friends. Today I am only 10 or 12, bohemians like me, but they are the ones who help me, ”he added when explaining his exile inside the” little country “. In the end, the former National of Montevideo, sentenced: “I want to continue like this, I don’t want to be next to the rich.”