The very hard moment of health experienced by Daniel Passarella

“It’s no longer the Passarella we used to know. Now it’s another Daniel”.

His friends are shocked. Some even try to deny it in public. But it is understandable: it is painful to accept that the most famous travel companion suffer from the sequelae of a neurodegenerative disease similar to ALS which, with increasing frequency, at the age of 69 makes him not place himself in time and space.

The Kaiser today undergoes a process of cognitive impairment similar to that experienced by his father. His intimates assure that he rarely leaves the house alone and that his only activities at the moment are some trips with his Mercedes Benz in the neighborhood of the house in Lomas de San Isidro but with assistance, as he can suddenly forget the address at where he was going or losing his bearings. Or the periodic visits to Chacabuco where his son Lucas has lived for some years.

The youngest of the Passarella, in fact, would be considering returning to Buenos Aires because, due to his condition, his father not only can no longer manage a football team: Nor manage the assets of your property. Even if someone met him in the bakery where he met for coffee with friends or on the streets of his country, he may not notice the symptoms, around him they assure that today they are much more frequent than about three years ago, when they began to become evident.

Although in recent times it has been linked to the possibility of coaching Chinese, Qatari, Arab and even Latin American teams, in his most intimate environment they assure us that it was more media noise than reality, since in no case could he have taken responsibility for it.

His former teammates / friends / members of his coaching staff are not part of his inner circle today, nor are most of the executives who accompanied him during the leadership that led to the historic decline of River in 2011. He also saw many for the last time in the wake of Alessandro Sabella.

River was the last team he headed in 2007. River was also the club that made him the best defender in Argentine football history. And River also attempted him to become one of four people in the world who was a player, manager and president of the same club along with Santiago Bernabeu, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Babington.

With a social condemnation that did not allow him to step on the Monumental and surroundings, awaiting the sentence of the trial started for embezzlement and formation of violent groups that it would be difficult at this point to find him guilty and with a last position as Executive Director of World Talent Group, a company he created with the Salvadoran billionaire Fito Salume, Passarella -as those who accompany him today say- “It’s not what we used to know anymore.”