Martyn Clarke has died, the 42-year-old from Malvinense who tried at Boca de Bianchi, ate pizza with Maradona and dreamed of being the new Palermo

Your name, Martin Clark. His home, the Malvinas. His passion is football. An impossible love, Boca Juniors. He could thus begin to write the story of this young ex footballer, whose name became known in 1999 and whose tragic death was made known in the last few hours, according to information from the agency. Argentine news.

“Football, so often accused of promoting absurd nationalisms, yesterday acted in the opposite way. Martyn Clarke, a 19-year-old from the Malvinas, trained in the afternoon with the Boca reserve, was very well received by the rest of the players and will be tested for 25 days at the club”.

This was the story of clarion, in August 1999, to recount those days of dreams and expectations for the young athlete born in England but raised in Puerto Argentino. And that, according to what was leaked from the islands, he would have committed suicide last December at the age of 42. The memory of his performance at Boca will be preserved forever.

Born in 1980, Martyn has played music The globe, an amateur team from the Malvinas league and carried out maintenance work in the municipality of Puerto Argentino. There he met Stephen Cichellothe Argentine who had directed the conference that Diego Maradona gave at the University of Oxford in 1996. When he saw him play, Cichello asked him which Argentine team he knew, and the boy answered him with his mouth.

After talking with Maurizio Macripresident of the club at the time, Cichello got him a test at the Xeneize and the possibility of staying in the pension of Yellow house. Maradona invited him to watch Boca vs Independiente from his box at the Bombonera. So he went from living on islands with 2,200 inhabitants to watching a classic in front of nearly 40,000 people. And no less than with Diego. The evening ended eating a pizza next to the 10 and talking about Riquelme’s dribbling and Palermo’s goals.

In his first practice with youth players and some professionals, he deployed as a centre-forward and scored two goals from passes by Silvio Carrario. “Clarke tried a Chilean without success: with his 1.87 m and his 82 kg, he had to endure other mocking comparisons with Boca’s 9”, we read that day.

“I see myself similar to (Martín) Palermo. Just a little, nothing more. I’m not as good as him, but I’m strong, I use my body well and have a good header. Every day I dream of playing Bombonera,” he told the press.

Martyn belonged to a family with three generations of Falklands, although his parents decided that he was born in a hospital in Plymouth, England. His mother, Julie, owned a pub on the island. Eventually, the dream of playing for Boca vanished and returning home was not easy. They say he was labeled a “traitor” for considering that he had volunteered to be part of a “pro-Argentine” propaganda campaign. And his career ended by taking him to small teams in the United States and minor leagues in England.

According to NA information, Martyn’s brother was the one who confirmed the unfortunate news of his death. The former footballer worked in a logistics company and divided his days between Puerto Argentino and England.