Final four seconds, there is no stretch. The rapporteur anticipates that there is still “one more left.” The Argentine player makes the side with his foot, the ball arrives for Santiago Basile who finishes from medium distance and the shot crashes into the left post of the Portuguese goalkeeper. No more time. The Futsal World Cup Lithuania 2021 is for the Lusos. Matías Lucuix, Albiceleste coach, grabs his head. The lament of the entire campus describes a situation: the opportunity to win the double championship and renew the laurels achieved in Colombia 2016 narrowly escaped.
“If that ball entered the final it was ours. The goal was going to be a coup of emotional effect ”, says Lucuix to Libero and more than regretting, he is grateful for all the love they received during the competition. “It seems to me that the people, the Argentine, felt represented with the spirit of the team. That fight, the perseverance to achieve the objectives. We have received messages from all sides. We saw the people’s revolution after the game against Brazil – he refers to the semifinal match that Argentina beat Verdeamarela 2 to 1 – It was very nice ”.
The current coach of the Argentine futsal team is 35 years old, but he lived as if he already had half a century on him. As a player he was trained in River, then he went for four seasons to Caja Segovia in Spain and had a brief stint at Inter Movistar. Inside the 40×20 rectangle it was unstoppable, unbalanced, considered the greatest talent in Argentine futsal. The future was at his feet. Until one day he had an injury, an unexpected injury, that left him out of everything. At the age of 26, he suffered a triple fracture of the tibia and fibula while playing a match with Argentina at the 2012 World Cup in Thailand and had to undergo three operations. He thought he would be able to play again and waited. Doctors tried plates, screws, bone grafts, but there was no case. At 30 he said enough.
“As an athlete, you want to retire on a court, being old. Mine was due to a tragic consequence: an injury that brought me different misfortunes and complications. In the first operation, a bacterium leads me to have a very important infection. In the second, when the bone did not heal, they had to put me in a graft and it didn’t work either. The problem was when I started to support. When I didn’t have my boot or crutches, it started to hurt. My bone was breaking. In the last operation they removed bone from the iliac crest and that was where the fracture finished consolidating – Lucuix says – But there came a time when I said up to here, I want to walk without crutches, have independence and that they are not helping me for everything. That’s when I made the decision to stop playing. It is something that costs you, my intention was not to give up. I always wanted to retire inside a court, but given the circumstances I put the final point. I didn’t want to be like this anymore. I wanted to go to a shopping mall, walk without crutches and not have to sit down because my leg hurt ”.
Off the court forever, he had to think about what he was going to do. Between comings and goings, annoyances that haunted him because of what he had experienced – “I got hurt by the sport, I wondered why what happened to me had happened to me” – he decided to take futsal courses in Spain, where he lived during many years, and nurture new motivations. “In Spain there are four levels and I got to do two. It depends on what one wants to direct. For the highest division you have to have all four, then there is one that is pro, which gives you the possibility of directing everything that is UEFA, European competitions, but he joined this last year. I need one to be able to direct an honor competition. It is a pending account. It’s in my head to be able to do it, but I have to take a long time. I would have to live there again, ”he says.
During that path of learning as DT and making his first fires with minor divisions, the call came that would change his life. Diego Giustozzi (coach of the 2013 -2016 National Team) summoned him to be his assistant in Colombia 2016 and together they made history: they won the first world championship for Argentina. “We are friends. A friend of life. Beyond the fact that we share a team, national team and coaching staff, he has taught me a lot. Today I am what I am, or what I think I am, thanks to him “Lucuix says.
A true story of resilience …
“There were many tears, his own defeats. He took one step forward and three back. He did not see the end. It was not over. FIt was an overcoming, a mental struggle, which has taught me not to lower my arms, to fight, to compete and to forge a mentality. Many times one takes frustrations or defeats as the end of the world and no, there are other things that are worse. You have to get up, go ahead. Success does not only start from raising a glass: it starts from overcoming oneself, from perseverance, from day-to-day work. It seems to me that this is the most important thing and the reflection that all this leaves me, “he recalls.
Lucuix is excited about winning the world runner-up in Lithuania and about the national futsal present. The bet on the future is a greater popularization of the discipline. “Our dream starts from Futsal being in the schools. That would be the turning point for our sport to finish making the leap in quality – he explains – It is a long-term plan. Without the baby disappearing, the idea would be to try to make the Futsal rules more participatory. That the boys can see this discipline as a projection of life. This is already happening in Europe. This sport has a lot of roots because boys who are already five or six years old play Futsal and from there each one chooses which path to take ”.
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