Ricardo Centurión, the star trying to re-emerge in Chiqui Tapia’s club: “They have been difficult months for me”

At 30, Richard Centurion seeks a new revival in his tumultuous career. The former player of racing, Mouth, Velez AND Saint Lawrence was presented this Friday as a reinforcement of central barrackswith whose shirt (with the number 23 on the back) he could make his debut on Saturday, when the cast directed by Rodolfo De Paoli will visit Sarmiento at Eva Perón for the second round of the Professional Football League.

In the reopened press room of the stadium Claudius Tapia and just before 8:00 (“I’m a little sleepy because it’s early”, joked the footballer) because the team had to leave later for Junín, Centurión thanked the club president for the opportunity, matías tapiawho accompanied him and called him “one of the best players in Argentine football”.

“They have been difficult months for me,” he acknowledged. Hundredwho in 2022 only played 12 games for San Lorenzo e He hasn’t taken the field since April 23, in the 2-1 defeat against Patronato al Pedro Bidegain. “I don’t have much to think about what I have left behind, but what awaits me. Life is now. I am very happy to be here and I want to give everything to achieve the goals we have,” he was enthusiastic.

The man who also had passes for Italy’s Genoa, Brazil’s San Pablo and Mexico’s Atlético San Luis was loaned out until December 31 by Vélez, owner of his record. This Friday he said that in recent months he had received offers from other institutions and explained why he had opted for Barracas: “When I have offers, I analyze if they really love me. And that’s why it happened. This is a nice, humble club, and this seduced me.”

Centurión had already been at the stadium on Monday, witnessing Godoy Cruz’s 1-0 defeat in their Professional League debut, and trained with his new team-mates over the next few days. The plan of Rodolfo De Paoli is to take him to the relay bench this Saturday. “If I travel it is because the technical staff saw me well. I’m already available,” said the player, who hoped to add his first minutes in Junín. “I’m training and giving my all, little or a lot, at the start of a season. I’m 100% focused on tomorrow’s match ”, he justified.

As for the goals of this new cycle of his career, he distinguished the personal from the collective. “This is the opportunity to take off. I want to settle down again in Argentine football and go back to doing what I like and what makes me so happy,” he said. And he maintained that with the team he aimed to “achieve permanence and fight to enter an international cup.”

“I found myself in a very humble and hardworking group, with a formidable coaching staff and leaders who are very good people. Here we all accompany each other, grab the rope and shoot in the same direction,” celebrated Centurión, with sleep still imprinted on his face, before posing with the red and white shirt.

The Tragic Story of Centurion

It was June 17, 2012. Luis Zubeldía named him starter and it didn’t take long for him to be compared to Loco Corbatta. They would have things in common: dribbling and a tragic history. The Academy is having a bad time with Rafaela (she will lose 4-2) and the 19-year-old on his debut starts throwing bicycles, feints and pipes, to give that joy that the team lacked in that Clausura 2012. He played with audacity of a boy having fun with his friends. From a distance it seems that this was the outlet of a sad life and a difficult childhood.

It didn’t take long to get attention Richard Centurion. Because of the dribbling that he began to translate into goals in the second round of the following tournament (he converted for the first time in the 2-0 win against Argentinos) and also because of his habits off the pitch. You’ve started living strong, Centu. Fast and furious, as if time is running out.

The day her photo was leaked a double spout Itaca Pajera a real scandal erupted. Irons were part of their daily life. It happened when I was in Racing. And also in the mouth. They criticized him and he began to withdraw, to get angry, not talking to anyone. Then yes, the time has come to let off steam through the networks. The famous “say it what they want”.

“The normal thing for me was to see guns and drugs. It was what happened next to me. I like guns. If I grew up on a yacht, I’d like yachts,” he later explained.

Centurión had had a difficult childhood. He grew up in Villa Luján, a precarious settlement in Sarandí. The day he bought an apartment with what he won in football, he brought many of his friends with him. But he couldn’t stop passing through the neighborhood. Until she began to feel like a toad from another well and she decided not to return, to leave there: “I began to feel heavy there …”.

It’s just that innocence was a thing of the past. There were already a few boys left from childhood – the unconditional ones. “Of my 30 childhood friends, only three remain.” It is not necessary to clarify how they died…

“I got tired of living”

He said it in September, after a long silence, in an interview with Marcelo Palacios of Radio La Red: “At a certain point I got tired of life. I couldn’t stand myself. I had panic attacks. I continue to live like in a pandemic. I’m alone,” Centu said, yelling for help.

Centurion had just missed his millionth chance. As he did at Racing, at Boca, at Vélez, in his brief adventures in Italy and in Mexico … he did it at San Lorenzo too. The reason? More or less as always: the player missed a couple of training sessions, in this case demotivated by the lack of chances. The easiest thing is to judge it, from a keyboard. It is best to try to follow his path to understand what happened to him.

“Big asshole stuff, I had never missed a workoutI haven’t done this before. If I had hit it as a kid, I would have trained the same way. It was big, because of the head, because of a lot of problems I had. I love working out, the topic was important,” he confessed.

On those outings, Ricky was always making a mess and was often on the verge of causing tragedy. It was 2016, he played at Boca and went out at Chapter 1 bowling in Lanús. They taunted it and it was a short fuse. As has happened so many times, he got into trouble, escaped in his car and caused a multi-faceted confrontation. The blood alcohol levels that the police analysis showed said it all and the player ended up accepting the blame on him to lessen the collateral damage.

“You have to be a 24-hour Boca player,” said coach Guillermo Barros Schelotto, one of their best defenders.

But his departure from Xeneize was marked by a video: Centurión walked through the corridors of the Boca concentration camp supported by two companions, in an apparent state of drunkenness. His stage in Xeneize was over.

After a spell at Genoa, where he had already been in 2013, he returned to Racing. Chacho Coudet convinced Victor White to get him back. Centu had converted the goal of the 2014 championship (a December 14th that rose like a sword and blew up the cylinder) and the DT wanted to give him the chance to shine again in the place where he was born. It would have been his third internship at the Academy.

With Lautaro Martínez, Pantera Bou, Licha López and Huevo Acuña, the team started to shine and Centurión was substituted again. One morning he was stopped by the police. He had gone through two red lights and, when stopped, refused to take a breathalyzer test: “If we can fix it, I have to fix it. I can cover you for the month,” he tried to bribe the officer. They were waiting for it and (it was easy) they recorded it: the video quickly went viral.

At the start of the following season, as Coudet’s racing champion campaign began to take shape, he missed training. And Víctor Blanco has lost his filter: “He drank too much and didn’t go to training on Saturday as he should have. He has to become aware and take care of his image, he has obligations to fulfill. He made a mistake. He will go to the legal part to see pay the penalty he received. He is a Racing player all day and all night. We love him very much, but one hundred per cent. Otherwise he is not the player we were looking for.”

In February 2019, Chacho finally tires of Centurión: with the series of Copa Libertadores liquidated by River at the Monumental (it would have finished 3-0), the coach calls him to let him in and the player replies warmly: “You put me at he put the whole court on me”.

After an argument that ended with a shove, number 10 entered the field but the relationship with DT was interrupted forever. “Stroll it now …”, the popular sang to him for a phrase that he had thrown away when he was excluded from the World Cup in Russia.

Some time after, Ricky tried to explain what had happened: “I had already made two changes and he called me to be the third. When I walked I didn’t go with the best face. And then he said to me: ‘Are you shit?’ He didn’t ask me right. Sigali stopped him and calmed down. He kept insulting me and saying things to me and that’s where I take him out,” the player apologized.

A life full of blows

At 29, Centurión appears to have lived several lives in one. He was still young when his father died. The situation is confusing, one can hardly tell what he once said: “I lost my old man when I was very young, when I was five years old. He worked in an illegal factory pyrotechnics. It is not known how the factory exploded. There were seven guys working there and they all died.”

As if haunted by a curse, the footballer was losing all his loved ones. The tragic death of his father was followed by that of his best friend: “He died in my arms”.

“That was my worst moment,” Centu said. But fate had another slap in store for him. With an open hand, the kind that leave marks.

On March 29, 2020, he passed away Pasini melody, Ricky’s partner of those days. He died of cardiorespiratory arrest while driving. They had gone through the pandemic together and he had become a great support. Two weeks before him, his grandmother had died, a surrogate mother who had raised him.

He arrived at Fortin at the hands of Gabriel Heinze. Just like Coudet, DT felt able to tame the beast and took him in January 2020. “We know everything from the outside. I will take responsibility. I really want to be able to help him,” he said. it, but Centurion had a magnet for the problems. And he was in the middle of a complicated one.

The footballer was accused of sexual abuse, along with Thiago Almada, Miguel Brizuela and Juan Martín Lucero, after a party at the former Independiente’s house. Some time earlier he had received a complaint of gender violence from his ex-girlfriend, Melisa Tozzi.

Even if the players of Fortín they were fired from the case, leaving former coach Juan José Acuña as the main defendant, Ricky was once again in the eye of the storm. Heinze slammed the door and lost the retaining wall, just as his grandmother and girlfriend died. Completely dazed, Centurión returned to his adventures and found no refuge in Vélez.

The last adventure was in San Lorenzo, where he was unable to shine: neither with Troglio nor with Fernando Berón. There was no patience in the cyclone and they terminated the contract. “No one else called me, the champion’s friends have disappeared,” he complained and asked for another chance. The possibility has now been given to him by Barracas Central. And the ball is with Ricky.