The tragic story of Miguel Torrén, the captain of Argentinos Juniors killed by four brothers in Rosario

Miguel Angel Torren (1988, Villa Constitution, Santa Fe) you don’t want to get used to living chased by death. and does not give up. He fought from a very young age and every day of his existence to fill himself with life, even if the tragedy seems cruel to him and to his people. This is how Torrén incorporated and followed to the letter every advice of the Velázquez, the family that welcomed him to Rosario while his father juggled to raise him and his five older brothers. Thus it was that he managed to dribble the marked cards of destiny and with which he built a beautiful family Nataliathe woman he met when he was 15 and who over time became his support and the mother of Vladimir, holy card AND angelthree 18, 16 and 12 year old boys playing and dreaming in the Lower Divisions of Young Argentines.

In the La Paternal club, this defender makes history walking. It doesn’t matter that his football DNA – a tough, almost impenetrable boy – does not correspond to the tradition of the team that gave birth to Diego Armando Maradona and dozens of football artists. Though he trained at Newell’s Old Boys and reached the First Division as a teenager before moving on to Cerro Porteño in Paraguay, Torrén is already synonymous with Argentines. He has worn the colors of the Bug for thirteen seasons, against all odds. All the technicians choose it. There must be a reason. He has 335 games and is just four appearances away from equaling Oscar Di Stéfano as the institution’s most capped player. There he scored the six goals that he turned into his career. There he finds the other ground wire, besides his family, that he needs to continue. Because Torren knows, and repeats it again and again, that life, despite everything, must go on.

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It’s just that fate, cursed fate, tested him very early. He hadn’t turned three months old – he was born on August 12, 1988 – when a bad connection in a floor fan killed his mother. The woman was electrocuted at her home. He had six children and mangoes were no longer enough in the super humble house on the outskirts of Rosario. His older brothers continued under the tutelage of their father, who worked hard every day to raise the money needed to bring food and cover basic needs. Miguel, on the other hand, was lucky enough to meet the Velázquez family. “If it wasn’t for them, I would have grown up on the street and my life would have been totally different. They taught me respect, humility, what was right, which way to go,” Torrén told journalist Diego Paulich, from Olé. And he continued: “I started playing in Venezuela, the neighborhood club, and the man had his own. I remember I was everywhere with a pickup truck looking for boys to take them. He found me playing in the square, barefoot. He saw my condition and talked to my old man and hired me in the his club, Itatí. I started staying at their house on the weekends and a few months later I went directly to live with them. I was there for six years, they taught me many things, I went to school.”

Playing football well was his pass. Otherwise, the story would be different. This weekend, Torrén received the news of the murder of José Sixto, the fourth of his brothers who died brutally in the last 14 years. The common denominator is that all the crimes took place in and around Rosario. A city where violence does not stop: there are 130 homicides so far in 2023.

José Sixto’s life ended after 21:30 on Saturday. Four people on two motorcycles rang the bell of his house in the Godoy neighborhood. She opened the door and received only bullets. She has suffered the same misfortune as Walter, who was murdered in 2010 when he was 32 years old, while playing a soccer game on the outskirts of the city of Santa Fe. Subsequently, on this road of misfortunes, he continued Gabrielwho at 34 did not survive a beating after a fight with two brothers-in-law in 2020. A year later, Louis he was shot three times as he walked down the street. In the middle, His father died like thousands of Argentines in the midst of the pandemic. The drama of poverty. The drama of insecurity. The drama of hunger. The drama of health All dramas of Rosario. All the tragedies of a decomposing Argentina.

“Unfortunately, as children we had a very difficult life, a very complicated childhood. We immediately suffered the loss of my mother and were six siblings. My old man had to work all his life and he couldn’t take care of us much because he went out early and came back at night. Unfortunately when you don’t have support and you don’t have someone to guide you… We grew up on the street”Torrén confessed this Monday in an audio he recorded to the journalist Mauro Szetafrom La Rossa radio.

Although they have been separated because life, like so many brothers, has taken them on different paths, Torren is not indifferent to pain. “They were grown up, they had their own families, they decide how to live and what they want to do. More than advising them, she couldn’t do anything else. They go their own way, but when these things happen it hits you hard. I grew up, formed my beautiful family, with a great woman who accompanies me at all times and my children, who are my strength in these difficult times. The truth is, these last few years have hit me hard. Not only did I lose my mother when we were children, but first I lost my brother Walter, then Gabriel, Luis Anastasio and now José. These are difficult times. I keep going, because if I lie at home and don’t get out of bed, I end up walking into a blind hole that I can’t get out of.”

Torren knows that the pain will go away sooner or later. She forces herself to go on. Don’t lower your arms. For his family, for his fellow Argentines – there he has the support of Patricio, the school psychologist -, for the Bicho fans. For him. “Training, playing on the weekends… That’s where I get rid of what I have to go through,” he confesses. I have to be strong for my children, for my wife. They are my engine and I am their support. For them I will continue to fight, fight and try to get out of the pain every day.”.