He runs a bus line and wants nothing to do with football: Ariel Rocha, the last Iron goalkeeper who played against Boca

On March 19, 2000, fans of Iron they left the field cursing a defeat against Mouth without knowing it was the last. That day, it took the team three minutes Carlo Bianchi in giving the first shot, with a great goal Juan Riquelme. He was beaten and the chronicle of that match published in Clarione He talks about the mistakes of Caballito’s team and how they made things easier for him. “I don’t remember, was I sure I got the cut?”Request Ariel Rock (49), the last archer of Portulaca who faced the Xeneize. That campaign was so bad, worse than the previous two, that they only won two games and at the end of Clausura 2000, Caballito’s team descended to B Nacional and from there rushed to Primera B. A metaphor for the country that was coming.

Rocha continued his career in Independiente and made his debut in the local tournament – his first game in red was against Universidad Católica for Libertadores – against Boca, which he had just beaten. real Madrid from Intercontinental. “We beat him 4-0,” she points out with a better memory. And it wasn’t the first time that Xeneize crossed paths: when it debuted in the Primera de Ferro, that was also the rival. Rocha left the business at the age of 31, with plenty of room to continue.

In Independiente he was marginalized: he did not even train with the Reserve. He managed to recover his pass after the intervention of Argentine footballers. Among other things, Rocha has publicly denounced that the managers of the club were withholding part of the salaries of the players. Rocha was not born to be silent. He went to Nueva Chicago and the last stop at Arsenal de Sarandí. At the time, his head was not in the world of football. Today he earns his living as an agricultural producer with fields in Lezama and Chascomús – breeding and fattening of cattle, with production of cereals – and together with his family he is responsible for the 178 bus line that connects Pompeya with Florencio Varela.

-How did the camps and the collective come about?

-When I was playing soccer, the players started (the real estate investment) apartments and I took over for the field, in 91-92. I’ve been coming ever since. I have always liked some lost cells of my mother, who came from Spain and there the family took care of a small farm … No one had ever dedicated themselves to this. When I retired there I started with the company. My father was a driver, then a shareholder. I put the same force on the (transport) line as I put on the butt. I joined the company on 2 June 2002, in the middle of a quilombo: the departure of (president Fernando) De La Rúa. I was at Arsenal … And here we are today.

-At the time you were one of the few players who spoke about what the country was experiencing on a social level …

-The player tries to make little effort. Football has always been, and is, a bubble. I’ve always been a half green dog in that sense. I would have preferred to take the first step to play well and make news in football. The times I could have gone well and the times I couldn’t, bad. But I’ve always said things that the other doesn’t always want to hear. It has always been my problem and that is why I left football at an early age. He did not share the journey of the whole world, of the leaders, nothing. This will cause you to lose your lockers on this journey. You are not a business, you are nothing, and what’s more, perhaps by not cutting corners like Pato Fillol, you cannot supply it. All my life I have tried to say what I heard in the most dignified way, without hurting anyone’s ear. I don’t have the truth, but I say what I think.

Do you regret that look?

– I do not regret! Because I would have had to be very hypocritical to keep playing and to put aside what I thought. I would have to live another life to see what I would do and I am 99% sure I would do the same because the greatest credit I have is my word. What I didn’t achieve with gloves, life later made up for. Everyone here wants to twist everything to even the game and the shit is tied to another shit, not something well done. So every time we go back, we tie shit with shit, mistakes with mistakes and therefore we cannot put together a country, a family, a company or a football team. This is why I do not conduct, this is why I do not play and this is why I am where I am, with the affections I have.

Do you miss football?

-And … No. I don’t miss football.

– Are you missing something?

– The locker room is missing. Being a footballer in this country means having VAT: but 50 percent, not 21 or 10.5. As much as you play as you play, you always want to have a soccer player friend. I miss the locker room, the physical state, the way I felt when I played. Then the environment makes you forget it a bit. I always say, from the humblest place, that if you weren’t in a locker room, you didn’t share years with 30 people who don’t think like you but who want to score a goal there and don’t do it here, it’s like learning one more subject in life. It is a trip with so many dizziness where you lose, you win … You have to have a balance that perhaps life does not give you in any field: it is a lot of vertigo. You have to prepare to lose, withdraw, win. Life afterwards gives you the advantage of thinking more time, but in the arc you have a tenth of a second to decide, playing eight anyway. In life you have one day, one week, five months to think about something. Football puts you in one place and at a certain point many are determined and do not make it to dessert: they make mistakes because of the trip and boys with many conditions are cut off, boys who could play anywhere and end up playing nowhere. It happens and will continue to happen.

– Are you going to the camp?

-I never went there again. Well, actually I’m lying: my son took me, we are all from Independiente and at that moment Independiente was in danger of relegation and my eldest son, Bautista, told me: ‘Let’s see if we change streak’. We went there, it was a draw, but the streak and fate were sealed.

-But why didn’t you go more?

-Maybe it is another of the questions pending analysis that you need to do. I live happy, very motivated in what I do and I don’t stop to see why I don’t go anymore. I put everything I could into football and now I put everything into what I’m doing very intensely. Maybe I don’t have time. Honestly, nothing wakes me up. I watch football from England, Spain, my friend (Gabriel) Milito’s Argentines, I watch certain matches I choose, a Sunday classic. But if I have to stop doing something that interests me for a game, I don’t.

–Ferro and Boca play for the Argentine Cup, how do you think the fans live it after so long?

-The fan will experience it just like the team. The fan returns to the place where he shouldn’t have left. It’s like he has a flash and wakes up in “A” for a while, for 90 minutes. After the game he will come to the reality of where Ferro is today. The team must have maximum concentration. Players will give 100 percent twice because that’s the game where you can step into the story and show how you’re doing things. The illusion is twofold, for the fans and the players.

-The last time they played you were the goalkeeper, what do you remember?

-I remember many Ferro-Boca. One day we beat the Boca de Bilardo, which Caniggia had. The people of Boca have left the camp, they say. Then a 1-1 with Bambino Veira’s team, who didn’t play against Riquelme and at that point they weren’t champions … But I don’t particularly remember that match. I remember the previous one, I played pretty well, I played undercover, I didn’t do well and we lost 4-2 … but from 4-0 I don’t have a record … selective memory (laughs)

-Here’s the compact on Youtube …

-Yes, actually it was me (more laughter)

-Ferro-Boca, then, after 22 years, are you looking at it?

– How about? I stop to look at it