If he sought to protect the maxim over the temptation of opposites, then mutual admiration between James Rodriguez and Carlos Valderrama would be fine.
Valderrama at the forefront of a generation of fickle Colombian footballers, so incredibly talented that they can tear Argentina 5-0 apart in a 1993 World Cup qualifier in Buenos Aires, but vulnerable to the kind of fall that had beaten them in the last nine. months later across Romania and the United States.
Colombia, a Copa America semi-finalist over the years in either aspect of this 1994 World Cup.
Two months after the 1995 South American tournament, they arrived in Wembley for what gave the impression of being one of the friendly ones who were meant to be forgotten before the highlight was extinguished.
But it is a Colombian team with Faustino Asprilla at one end of the field and René Higuita at the other, interspersing the immediately recognizable figure of Valderrama in midfield.
Stopping goalkeeper Higuita’s scorpion kick in a deported shot by Jamie Redknapp allowed a goalless draw to live in memory much longer than he was entitled to.
However, for more than a decade, following his overseas debut in 1985, Valderrama was the undisputed icon of Colombian football.
He finished his career with hedonistic and sunny stops in Miami and Florida, an herbal order of events.
Charismatic and extravagant Valderrama. His huge hair bush added to the legend, but he would possibly have eclipsed his football, which is exceptionally good.
The young James, for his part, communicates about an incredibly shy boy, first with his youth teams, then as a talented teenager in Envigado in Colombia and at the Argentine club Banfield.
So at first glance, he might have legitimately expected James to look elsewhere for his sports idol, especially since his memories of Valderrama would have basically been formed of old images.
But James confirmed: “He is the one I admire the most . . . he is a more sensible player. I met him once, and he is a wonderful person, someone who has brought great joy to the country.
“He’s a very smart footballer who can create anything with nothing and score goals. “
We can assume that James aspired to a percentage of Valderrama’s ability to explicit himself off the field.
There was no such thing in that.
Some of his teammates at El Dorado blindly swear they heard 13-year-old James say a word.
But it was more than a tight lip that differentiated the player from his more youthful teammates.
He made his senior debut for Envigado at the age of 14, an early graduate of the club’s El Dorado de facto academy.
“James is the result of his parents’ efforts,” said Hugo Castaño, Envigado’s manager who rodriguez to senior football.
“I’ve never noticed a child that age exercising twice a day without complaining. The field he taught is fundamental.
An ex-pad, Diego Norona, a loose kick for his team when a minor James promoted the group.
“He hit the ball with such conviction [when the team took a loose kick] that I let him take it,” Norona said.
“Without saying a word, he pulled it off the wall and scored a surprising goal. Our same usual upbringing to break through the wall, never outside the wall. We temporarily learned that it’s special.
As for James’ innate quality, the cat came out of the bag even before his professional debut.
He scored thirteen goals in nine games of the prestigious Copa Pony de Fútbol de Colombia, winning the festival for the most sensitive under thirteen years of age with the Tolimense Academy when he was 11 years old. James scored directly on a corner in the final.
His progress from that point had not progressed fast enough, in the opinion of mum Maria and her stepfather Juan Carlos, despite James’ role in an Envigado team that ascended to the first department of his country.
The result of this commotion was a transfer to Argentina and from Banfield to Rodríguez, leaving the amenities described through Edgar Ramírez, coach when the player left Envigado, such as: “No grass, only sand and dust that on bad days they flew us everywhere. ” . “
James left for Argentina at the age of 16, after being accompanied by his mother and stepfather to Medellin when Envigado took James after his stellar turn at the Pony Cup.
“It’s hard, obviously, but when you need to be someone in life, you have to approve and make sacrifices,” James said.
The player recalled that he lacked coins when he got home, the dead air replaced his mother’s voice.
James experienced nostalgia, but with an adulthood denying his love years, able to position considerations off the court when he came to his football.
In fact, he had a lot of news to broadcast in those conversations with his circle of relatives more than 6,000 kilometers north of South America.
Castaño believes that James’ two years in Buenos Aires were nicknamed his “true school”, rounding the player and user to Europe first.
When he decided to sign for Porto in 2010, a few days before his 19th birthday, James had a medal in the Argentine championship — Banfield’s first title, won in 2009 — and a good dose of football in the Copa Libertadores, the equivalent of the South. American Champions League.
He had scored goals at the time of the season, added to the one that had faced Rosario Central in the last crusade that made him the youngest foreigner with 17 years to score in the Argentine First Division.
It was his initial destination selection in Europe and his next move to Monaco – living in the sumptuous Monte Carlo for a year, he withstood the highlight that Valderrrama would have appreciated: “Every day after education in Monaco, practice your skills over and over again when you return home,” recounted a media confidant in James’ homeland , who would possibly have disposed of the player’s profile on that continent.
It is true that his numbers deserved attention long before the 2014 World Cup than James’ life.
He was directly involved in 53 goals, scoring 25, in 65 league appearances (49 as a starter) for Porto.
In his first crusade with the club, three-time winner, adding the Europa League and the Portuguese Cup – James scored a hat-trick in the 6–2 national victory over Vitoria SC – to the name of the league that would retain Porto in the next two campaigns.
James, the Portuguese player of the season in 2011/12 and there is more good individual luck with Monaco after his signing in 2013.
During his solitary crusade at principality, James’ nine goals and thirteen assists in 34 Ligue 1 games secured his place on the departmental season team, in addition to his club’s player of the year honors.
James’ fan list grows. He is 22 years old, fearless and beaten with a confidence born of excellence on all national and continental platforms.
So, a bet.
This 2014 World Cup, where Rodriguez’s six earned him the Tournament’s Golden Boot, counterintuitively, reduced his number of contenders.
He had excelled to such an extent that only a handful of clubs could face Monaco’s immediate climbing costs.
James’ purpose in a draw in the 16-round circular with Uruguay, voted at the festival, comes to mind more fluently than that scored through Mario Gotze to win the maximum for Germany.
Gotze, an offensive midfielder like James, discovered that recreating his World Cup was a very complicated task. He scored intermittently the following season with Bayern Munich, but after some other crusade moved to first club Borussia Dortmund.
Rodriguez, meanwhile, travelled to Real Madrid after the Spaniards amassed $71 million to pay the Monaco World Cup bonus.
The revelation of the World Cup – his opposite blow to Uruguay, when he torpedoed a ball forward and in a single ball spun and crushed a volley on the roof of the net at 25 meters, would win the FIFIA Puskas award for the “most beautiful” purpose of the calendar year: he gently took a huge weight off waiting to shine in his first season at the Bernabéu.
Carlo Ancelotti, who signed the player for Madrid, properly stated what was in his hands.
And he forgets.
Neither the thirteen goals and the thirteen assists in 29 League games, nor the pictorial ethic that can be attributed to James expanding his progression with Envigado through attendance at personal sessions with the outstanding coach Omar Suarez.
Ancelotti then reacted strongly when he spotted an opportunity to beat Bayern Munich in the summer of 2017.
Meanwhile, James had scored 15 goals and created 14 goals in 48 La Liga games in two seasons for Real Madrid, figures that are further extrapolated as 29 straight goals in 30 starts.
His medallion had swelled after successive Champions League titles and, in an exciting 2016/17, the honours of La Liga, the Club World Cup and the UEFA Super Cup to complete the European trophy of this campaign.
“To point out to James Rodríguez the greatest wish of our coach Carlo Ancelotti, following his successful collaboration in Madrid,” said Bayern President Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
Little wonder.
In the end, it would be Jupp Heynckes who would take credit for Ancelotti’s hotline with James.
Heynckes succeeded Ancelotti in Munich in October 2017 and, with James after the first influential performances through the metronomic generation of his numbers, described the player as a “ganga”.
James was included in the Bundesliga season team and the Champions League season team after Bayern won the German name and reached the last 4 of the European festival in 2017/18.
He contributed 11 bundesliga goals the next quarter, joining the 18 in which he had a direct hand last season, while Bayern retained their league, before claiming a place in the 2019 Copa América tournament team after Colombia’s quarter-final effort. .
Valderrama was named MVP of the South American competition 32 years earlier.
In all other respects, however, James’s achievements scream loudly, the taciturn boy from Cúcuta, the hometown he left to move west to Medellin while still in shorts, making all his noise on the ground.
“James Rodriguez will be the next big star, not only now for the next 10 years,” Valderrama said as his compatriot’s profile skyrocketed on his 2014 World Cup strength tour.
“It’s unique. He’s got more a character than any player I’ve ever seen.
“He has the prospect of being the greatest Colombian player of all time and one of the most productive of all time to play. “
Valderrama, whose record of 111 international matches with Colombia is likely to be threatened through James, lately with 76 and 12 goals, the most sensible goal scorer Radamel Falcao, has reviewed the subject of the heir to his throne in 2017.
“I don’t think there can be like me, ” said Valderrama.
“There’s James.
“He’s very smart and one of the most productive in the world. Why can’t he be the biggest?