The Amazing Sergio Story
coming in The Sun tomorrow:
(I know it's The Sun but surely they couldn't have made all this up)
Sergio Aguero is the jewel in Manchester City’s crown - and just like a diamond he was dug out of the dirt.
Aguero, 24, grew up in a slum known as the ‘cocaine capital’ of Argentina on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
And like team-mate Carlos Tevez — born in another of the city’s poorest areas — he honed his breathtaking skills on dirt pitches surrounded by drugs and violence.
Almost as soon as he could run, it was clear football would be a way out of the ghetto for Aguero.
His amazing talent was nurtured by Eduardo Gonzalez, who coached his dad, Leonel del Castillo, at local team Dardo Rocha.
Gonzalez, 70, told The Sun: “Leonel kept telling me about his son. When he turned eight I went to watch him.
“And he was special. He danced past the older kids.”
Aguero lived with his five brothers and two cousins in the infamous shanty town of Eucalyptus.
When Mencho Balbuena, one of Aguero’s youth coaches, took The Sun to visit the slum, he warned: “We go in and get out quickly or they’ll have us.”
Aguero’s parents were so poor, their small shack did not even have a toilet. Gonzalez, a former player at nearby giants Independiente, took Aguero, then nine, to his friend Nestor Rambert, who coached the club’s Under-13 team.
Rambert slotted Aguero into the youth set-up, starting him out with Balbuena in the U-11s. Balbuena, 66, said: “As a kid, he was already a cracking player.”
Rambert, 70, then coached Aguero for four years before he made his first-team debut at 15 years 35 days, smashing father-in-law Maradona’s record as the Argie league’s youngest player.
But the road to the big-time had been anything but easy. Aguero’s impoverished parents made local teams — who played for cash — pay £30 a game for his services.
And his dad kept bad company in Eucalyptus, creating constant problems for Rambert and Gonzalez. Gonzalez said: “Leonel was surrounded by drug addicts and crooks. It was a real battle with Kun.”
Rambert added: “Other kids’ parents were furious because he’d only come to train once a week.
“But I knew he was playing in the slums, earning money for his family.”
Gonzalez, who along with Rambert owned the rights to the player, supported Aguero and his parents financially, paying for food, medication, clothes, school books and bus fares.
When Aguero needed to escape the slum for his own good, Gonzalez and a business partner bought his family a house in the nearby city of Quilmes.
Rambert also provided Kun — nicknamed after a Japanese cartoon — with boots.
By the age of 12, Aguero had already led Independiente to a youth title and was being chased by Argentina’s other big clubs. In a match against Boca Juniors in 2001, he scored a stunning solo effort — beating four players before slotting into the bottom corner.
Ramon Maddoni, Boca’s youth coach and the man Tevez calls his second father, told Rambert he would swap his whole side for Aguero.
Boca had a £320,000 bid for the 13-year-old rejected and Rambert added: “Everyone tried to steal Sergio.
“I begged the director of football at Independiente to give his dad a job so he wouldn’t take the lad somewhere else.”
So the club made Leonel an assistant to the kit man. And Gonzalez would later buy him a car, so he could work as a taxi driver.
In 2000, Aguero was injured before a semi-final. Club doctor Hector Rodriguez recalled: “He couldn’t even run. But Rambert played him for a half anyway. He created space as teams were so scared they put three defenders on him!”
In his time, Aguero scored around 200 goals in the youth leagues for Independiente, whose flag he paraded during City’s on-pitch title celebrations in May.
His growing reputation attracted representatives from Juventus and Bayern Munich, who flew to Buenos Aires to meet Gonzalez.
He said: “Juve offered £1.3m. The president of River Plate invited me to lunch and offered £1m. But I wanted Sergio to play for Independiente.”
And just a month after he was 15, first-team boss Oscar Ruggeri handed Kun his debut off the bench and he signed an official contract.
But Spain’s Atletico Madrid soon came calling and, at 17, Aguero left Independiente for £18m, which the club used to build its new stadium.
Balbuena said: “He was a humble kid who got on with everybody.”
Aguero’s last-second heroics in the final game of last season that delivered the Premier League title to City came as no surprise to Rambert.
He said: “He was always a big player in the big games. And he showed it on the last day for City.”
And Rambert has good news for City boss Roberto Mancini — believing there is a lot more to come from Aguero, who scored 30 goals last season.
He said: “Sergio’s got more to give. Here, he took on defenders more. He’s not quite exploded yet.”
Full Article with Pictures:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sp ... story.html
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