Miguel Calero: The Condor is not extinguished

'The Condor', as they called him. When he stretched out his arms, it looked like wings. He beat them to fly out and take the ball ahead, the one he loved so much and gave him so much. With it, he achieved immortality. For reasons of fate, he was born in Colombia on April 14, but the truth is that he was Mexican. He did not manage to cross there and ended up in Geneva, a small municipality in Valle del Cauca. Guillermo Arriaga once said that Mexicans were born wherever they wanted. Calero chose Colombia. He came to this world in 1971, when in Chile they were trying to assassinate Salvador Allende and Apollo 14 was thrown into space. A world in which 'The Corpus Thursday Massacre' was the daily life of Mexicans and Charles Manson was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Miguel Ángel Calero Rodríguez started very early in football. Before he was 13 years old, he already showed his conditions. His first experience with a club was with Real Independiente, a small team from Geneva. From there, he went to the Carlos Sarmiento Lora Football School, in 1986. His pass cost $150,000 COP of the time, plus a uniform and 10 balls. He made his debut at the Pascual Guerrero Stadium in an exhibition match before a first division match between Deportivo Cali and Atlético Nacional. He was 15 years old at the time and shared a squad with Faryd Mondragon and Oscar Córdoba. The three of them played in the position of goalkeeper, they did so for years, even after taking different paths.

After his arrival in Cali, a scholarship at the Colegio Mayor de Yumbo, he met Reinaldo Rueda, the current coach of the Colombia national team. Rueda was a teacher at that school and took in the young Calero, helping him transport him from La Loma de Cruz, where the future goalkeeper lived, in a room that paid him football school, to the school in Yumbo. He picked him up at 6:15 in the morning in Santa Librada and dropped him off at school at 7. I'd come back for him at 12:40 and drop him off at his house at 1:30. They were later, around 3 o'clock, on the pan-american courts. The coach was his driver for almost 10 months. To think that afterwards, the paths of both would be so far from there, but so close to each other.

Calero made his debut as a professional goalkeeper in a team that no longer exists, Sporting de Barranquilla. It was in that year in 1987 that he earned his nickname. Actually, the first of them. They called him 'The Show' for his attempts to go out on the attack. He left the goal and ran all over the field as if he were a striker. With his good performances he won a place in the Deportivo Cali reserve and after the departure of the starting goalkeeper of the main team, he made his debut with the sugars in 1991. With the passing of the matches, he established himself as a tenacious goalkeeper. It would end up being vital to the title of '96. Achievement that the team reached after 22 years without achieving anything. Calero would be part of the team until 1997, when he joined Atlético Nacional.

The goalkeeper's pass to the purdolaga team cost around USD 1,300,000 and at the time was the highest transfer of Colombian football. His performances with the Antioquia green team, between 1998 and 2000, would take him to what from the beginning was the place he was destined to reach, the place where he was able to spread his wings freely. The Mexican Pachuca hired him at the beginning of the new millennium and the archer would wear his colors until the moment of his death.

Colombia and Mexico share many things, besides language. Colombian writer Juan Camilo Rincón recently wrote a book in which he explores some of the deepest relations between the two countries, at the level of literature and art. If it had been proposed to expand the spectrum to sport and football, specifically, it would surely have given for a three-volume collection. Calero's life in Mexico is the clearest sign of the affection and union between the two nations. From day one, his Colombian nationality merged with the essence of the Mexican and ended up demonstrating that borders do not exist, but rather trails that bifurcate.

With the Pachuca, Calero built the big one. Oh, God. If he had been a good archer before, here he exaggerated. He debuted on July 30, 2000 and would soon earn a spot on the starting team. He gradually spread his wings and in 2002 won his first international title as captain of the Mexicans. In that year he scored one of those goals. Yes, he scored goals too! He was in the lead, in added time, against Jaguares de Chiapas. He jumped as if to grab the ball with his hands, but ended up leaning on Silvani to push himself. 'El Condor' grabbed her into the air and sent her to guard.

With the Mexicans, between 2000 and 2011, he won four league titles, one South American Cup and four Concacaf Cups. It was wonderful to watch it on TV. How this condor flew. He was the only one in the Winning Eleven video games who wore pants and a hat. I played with my uncle and we always chose Calero as the starting goalkeeper of the Colombia national team. He was the fastest, the one that jumped the most. We tried to imitate their movements in real matches, which one saw early and did not understand very well because of the way Mexicans have of narrating, who stay as if they talk about many things around the match, but not so much about the match itself.

Wearing the shirt of the tricolor team, Calero was in 55 games, often as a substitute. He was great, but he had to live in the time of the giants. His flight, many times, did not reach him. He played the World Cup in France, in 1998, and the Copa America tournaments in 1991, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2007. He lifted the cup in 2001, in Bogotá, when they faced the Mexicans in the final. There he had a divided heart. Luckily, the one who saved was Oscar Córdoba. A year earlier, he reached the Gold Cup final with the team, but they would not win the title. Although he played little, he is remembered as one of the most important players of that stage.

Just for the year of his last Copa América, the first of the regrettable episodes came. Calero suffered a venous thrombosis in his left arm in September as a result of an old operation. I had to walk away for six months and after recovering, halfway because he failed to do it 100%, he was instrumental in obtaining that year's Super League trophy. He would save a penalty for Landon Donovan, the good American player, in the final that ended up tied to one goal and had to be defined from 12 steps. At that moment, Calero feels that he can no longer and announces that he is going to retire, but the insistence of his family and his fans prevent him from doing so. They don't even see him outside the courts. He decides to stay, although he knows he won't give up everything.

In 2009, beyond the ailments, he contributed and very well for the qualification of Pachuca to the Copa Libertadores that year. He saves four penalties and scores one against Atlas, in the InterLiga definition, which granted them entry to the continental tournament. Hold on as long as he can, 'El Condor' refuses not to retire and signs a renewal contract until 2011. He feels that he has something else left, that he can spread his wings a little longer. In total, he plays 495 matches with Pachuca and finally takes a step aside, one day in September.

In 2012 the farewell arrived, the last flight of 'El Condor'. On November 25 of that year, Calero went downstairs to his home in Mexico City and began to feel dizzy. He told one of his children. I felt like I couldn't move well. He couldn't walk afterwards. His children laughed thinking it was a game, what they didn't think was that it was the Game Over. On the way to the hospital, he suffered a cerebral infarction caused by an embolism in the right hemisphere. He was admitted and improved, but he relapsed on December 3 and died the next day. Even at that last moment he resisted, he was stubborn. He couldn't beat death.

The wings of 'El Condor' were closed in Mexican lands. His last breath was evoking his childhood in Colombia, dreaming of flying between the two skies and seeing everything. His death devastated the world of football and devastated me, who believed him to be invincible, resistant to extinction. He wasn't like the other condors, he was bigger. Although it is gone, I feel that it is still, that it flies somewhere, that it keeps going out of the arc to score goals. His life was that of a mythical bird, worthy of praise. His work can never be forgotten. Even statues are preparing him and the Mexican children who start at Pachuca have all to learn about the Colombian who passed by and left his armed nest.

On April 14, he would have turned 51 years old. How much does it take. All you have to do is remember it, and even if it doesn't appear in video games anymore, there you still smile in photos and videos. Anyone who is a fan of good football, of which he had that fantastic tale touch, cannot risk going around without knowing that one day Miguel Calero lived in this world, 'El Condor'.

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