FIFA World Cup 2018: Colombia’s Juan Quintero’s quest for greatness

This win gives Quintero a chance to finally live up to his early promise; to take Colombian football to new heights. Juanfer, as they call him, isn’t just chasing glory on field though. He also has a more personal quest: to find out if his father is dead, or still alive.

Quintero was born during the bloodiest period of Colombian history — when the country was snarkily called Locombia (Loco being Spanish for mad) — and in a neighbourhood that gained notoriety for being the ‘most dangerous’ in the world. Comuna 13, a steep hillside slum in Medellin, was at the heart of the seige between Colombia’s paramilitary and drug cartels in the early 90s.

In the crossfire, thousands disappeared overnight and several more lost their lives. Football, too, didn’t escape this ugly influence. Fights, gun shots, deaths on the sidelines of games was common. From this bloodied barrio emerged Colombia’s most prodigious football talent in decades. “Many say they haven’t seen a player with that vision since ‘Pibe’ Valderrama,” says Camilo Manrique, a sports writer with Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.

The violence, however, affected the families living in Comuna 13 in unimaginable ways. Even Quintero’s wouldn’t be untouched. He was just two years old when his father, Jaime, left home to join the military during the government’s conflict with Marxist rebel group FARC. That was in 1995. Jaime Quintero hasn’t returned home since. For the last 23 years, Quintero and his family knocked every doors in their search. “The strongest version that exists about Quintero’s father is that the Army made him disappear,” Manrique says.

Quintero’s mother, even today, leads a national movement to search for her husband and the others who went missing during Columbia’s war on drugs. Quintero, however, has never spoken about on this issue. In April, when he was pressed by local media to speak on the issue, he shot back, saying: “I won’t talk about it. I was to blame. It’s behind me.” It was a mysterious answer, he didn’t elaborate his angst or his guilt. Quintero began playing with his uncle on the pitch that had become a dumping ground for dead bodies. By late teens, he had earned the reputation of being the most skillful player not just in Colombia, but the whole of South America. He’d then lose his way and drift towards rap music before being dragged back to the sport. In Russia, he has shown why he is so important to the team. He’s been Colombia’s best player on field, so good that Real Madrid approached him shortly after the Poland match, wanting to sign him as James’ replacement. “The country expects magic from Quintero every time he is on the field. He may not have defensive side like Cuadrado or James have, but he makes up for it with vision that few have at the time of giving a pass,” Manrique says.

There’s a term in South American football glossary for players like Quintero — enganche. It means the ‘hook’. It refers to the ability of a player to delay his pass just by a fraction to allow the forward to move into an ideal position to receive it. In Argentina it’s known as la pausa, the pause.

Few players have been better exponents of this art than the Argentine legend Juan Riquelme. Against Poland, Quintero showed he possesses the same ability to visualise and create angles for an imaginative pass. The perfectly weighted ball to Falcao that led to Colombia’s second goal sent Pekerman bouncing on the touching. “Juan! Juan! Genius! You are a genius!” he said in disbelief as Quintero split open Polish defence with surgeon’s precision. To think of it, the ‘genius’ wasn’t even in Pekerman’s scheme of things until a few months ago — not because the Argentine tactician preferred others over him, but Quintero had lost the desire to play. “He was affected by the loss of his father, who never appeared and the truth was never known as to happened with thousands of people disappeared during the war in Colombia,” Manrique says.

When Quintero scored his first World Cup goal in 2014, against Ivory Coast, it seemed the most natural thing for a player of his quality. He was always destined for bigger things — even a career-threatening knee injury as a 17-year-old wouldn’t halt his march.

He had played just 27 games as a professional player when he European clubs came calling — Italian side Pescara first and then Porto. Back home, they believed he had buried the ghosts of a torturous childhood. In Brazil four years ago, he dazzled in front of the whole world, generating interest from Arsenal. But the deal fell through as Arsene Wenger wouldn’t pay the £30 million release fee.

That’s when things began to fall apart. Europe wasn’t suiting him or his game. As his performances for the club plummeted, so did his appearances for the national team — he played in five friendlies after the 2014 World Cup and was completely sidelined after that. La Pausa’s career hit an unexpected pause. Disillusioned, he put on weight and drifted away from the game.

Far from the war-zone it once was, Medellin — Comuna 13 in particular — transformed itself into one of Colombia’s biggest art hubs in the last decade. Its streets are painted in colourful graffiti and music — rap and reggaeton — became a form of expression to vent out.

Colombia’s most famous rap artist, Maluma, is from the same neighbourhood and is Quintero’s childhood friend. They even played together in the minor divisions for local club Envigado before choosing different career paths. But Quintero now decided to turn to music and even appeared in a couple of videos, sparking rumours that he had given up football altogether.

His rap songs, though, weren’t an outlet for emotional outbursts. Neither did they reflect his state of mind — one song is about women posting their pictures on Instagram. The demons of his past, his family feared, were turning to haunt him again.

So last year, he returned to home, where Independiente Medellin got him back on the field. Football became the centrepiece of his life once again and although he shone individually, his teammates weren’t always on the same wavelength as him. Earlier this year, he moved to River Plate. It was a perfect match — Quintero’s style fitting perfectly with the River Plate’s identity. The club’s coach Marcelo Gallardo, an attacking midfielder of high repute himself, managed to extract the best out of him. Pekerman was closely monitoring Quintero’s performances and the mediopunto, who wasn’t even among the fringes months ago, made a dramatic return to the national team for the World Cup.

Comuna 13 might not be as dangerous as it was two decades ago, but Simon Edwards, a Colombian football expert, says gangs continue to control the neighbourhood even today. “Just recently, there was a case where a fan was killed at the football stadium during a match in a gang-related violence. But it’s still peaceful now compared to what it was before. The people are nice and friendly. They seemed to have moved on,” Edwards says. Not everyone, though. Quintero often returns to Comuna 13, still searching for the answers. Every Christmas, he conducts a charity match for the kids from his neighbourhood, bringing along players like Cuadrado and Rodriguez.

“Young Colombians are always exposed to drug traffickers but football and the discipline that comes with being a professional player has turned many of those problems away. They know they can make it to the national team, like Juan Fernando,” Manrique says.

Another performance in the Round of 16 will only enhance his stardom. But that doesn’t interest Quintero. He just wants to know whether his father is dead or still alive.