Luis Díaz at the World Cup for Colombia: Everyone loves “Lucho” sport

You have to understand that, Mane then says. Some time ago, a Spanish journalist led him into trouble. He fantasized that he, Mane, favored his son moving to Real Madrid, and then there was a lot of confusion. But see: After three explicit offers to break off the conversation, Mane Díaz remains seated, talks about this and that and in between dives into the mysterious world of Guajira, where Barrancas is located, the birthplace of Luis Díaz. Until Mane Díaz at some point looks behind the back of the huge armchair in which he is sitting – and is startled: “Where has my wife actually gone?”

Mane Díaz is not only the father of Luis, who will lead the Colombian national team onto the field in the final group game against Portugal at the World Cup in Miami this weekend. He has long since become a public figure himself. Definitely Colombian, a little bit Bavarian too.

Sometimes Mane Díaz is the advertising figure for a Colombian supermarket chain, other times he is the father on Instagram who kneels in front of his son’s national jersey and asks God for help before the World Cup games. Then again he lets his followers – he has hundreds of thousands – take part in the celebrations Colombia National Team take part in the team hotel and heart the players after a successful battle with the camera in selfie mode. At FC Bayern he has already danced and sung on stage at title celebrations; At the DFB Cup final in Berlin he entered the ballroom alongside coach Vincent Kompany.

But Mane Díaz is not just a fact. He is above all a singer. A composer and interpreter of vallenatos, to be precise, which are among the cultural assets of Colombia and – even if other regions of Colombia deny this – are said to have seen the light of day in the Guajira.

Luis Díaz has won both games so far with Colombia, providing one goal and scoring one himself

If you want to get an idea of ​​what a vallenato is, you have to imagine the Cuban dance style Son and the Dominican merengue as relatives. Above all, he must remember what Gabriel García Márquez, the late Nobel Prize winner for literature, said about his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”: “It is nothing more than a 450-page vallenato.” The literary equivalent of “what the vallenato authors do with their musical instruments”.

Namely: driving through the villages, learning about events that can only be true, and then spreading them throughout the region. Singing. And to the accompaniment of an accordion, “that makes our feelings wrinkle,” as García Márquez once said.

The Vallenatos the late writer grew up with came from pre-commercial times, and what he appreciated about them was that they “told their stories the way my grandmother did.”

The vallenato that Mane Díaz recorded with accordionist Danni Salazar entitled “Mi Tricolor” is a little different. It doesn’t revolve around an event. He’s – “¡Gol, gol, gooool!” – a declaration of love to the Colombia National Teamto the “Tricolor”, to the son, who, by the way, has already made a few forays into music: He had a small appearance on “El Ritmo Que Nos Une” and recorded his own song called “La Promesa”. How should you say: Luis Díaz also showed at this World Cup that he understands football better. There have been two wins for Colombia so far, against Uzbekistan (3:1) and DR Congo (1:0). Díaz, who has so far only been as creative as his father on the pitch and not in the recording studio, scored a goal and provided an assist.

Mane Díaz says it is anything but a coincidence that he devoted himself to music: “My whole family is music. The Guajira is music. Everyone there is a composer or singer or plays (percussion) instruments like me: caja, guacharaca, conga.” And before you have written down the percussion instruments, a tsunami of names of relatives spills out of Díaz’s mouth. It’s such an endless list that you’d think Mane Díaz was creating a new Macondo, the name of the fictional town from García Márquez’s masterpiece. And he forces his counterpart to trace branching family trees in their heads that no one can reliably recite.

Except, of course, Mane Díaz.

He says that on the one hand there are all the Britos, some of whom he is related to: “Carlos Brito, Monche Brito, Romualdo Brito, who was a great composer, and Segundo Brito, who is currently saving the Vallenato to the next generations.”

On the other side: the Díaz. Especially Leandro Díaz, who was a cousin of Luis Díaz’s grandfather and is considered the Homer of Vallenato in Colombia. He was blind from birth “because God was too busy putting eyes on my soul,” as he once said, and yet he developed a skill that sounds like magical realism at its finest. He could describe and of course sing about the sometimes mountainous, sometimes arid landscapes like no other person in the whole of Guajira.

But Mane Díaz also remembers Luis Guillermo Díaz, the late Daniel Díaz and “Ponchito” Díaz, who “is an accomplished instrumentalist and has two singing brothers” who are his, Mane Díaz’s, cousins: “Above all, there is my father Jacob, who was also a composer and played the guacharaca excellently.” Guacharaca is a reed played with a grating fork and belongs to the idiophone family.

Jacob Díaz, now almost 90 years old, fathered eight children, “four females and four males,” as Mane Díaz explains, and as long as his back held out, he worked the land, just as his own father had done. He grew vegetables and fruit, bananas, yuca, corn and chili, he sowed beans and harvested coriander, malanga and coffee. “Actually, we only had to buy rice, and sometimes not even that, because a friend had a rice field,” says Mane Díaz.

“Our family comes from humble, we could say poor, backgrounds,” says Mane Díaz

It’s not just the farmer’s son’s pride, but it’s probably also what makes him angry when he suddenly mentions that years ago someone said that his kicking son Luis was malnourished as a child.

“Our family comes from humble, we could say poor, backgrounds,” says Mane Díaz. “But we never lacked for food, and when we had to, my wife and I made sacrifices.” But there is no explanation for the fact that Luis Díaz was so thin when he was young that they called him “Fideo,” the “noodle.”

Alone: ​​The truth is that Luis was not only not malnourished as a child, but was actually strong, even fat. Says Mane Diaz. Only: He suddenly became mysteriously ill and just as suddenly became thin. Because they “gave him dry eye,” says Mane Díaz. This is a remark that requires an anthropological translation because its literal meaning makes no sense and the poetry may not be apparent at first glance.

Pure science.

Didier Paz, a physiotherapist who worked with Díaz in the Colombian national team and is currently working on a biography of the footballer, was also unfamiliar with this. But he learned that there is a story that Luis Díaz was the victim of a ritual that in southern parts of the country is known as the “evil eye” and in the north it is known as “dry eye.” An explanation: Luis Díaz exuded so much energy that someone feared he could harm others.

Pure science.

What happened in the following years? Luis Díaz went to the football school that his father founded over 30 years ago and which now operates as a non-profit foundation. And the father helped his son become a better footballer. Luis Díaz became so good that in 2015, as a 17-year-old, he was invited to the “Copa América of the Indigenous Peoples” in Chile, even though he cannot be counted as part of the Wayúu people, who once owned the Guajira. But what did that matter? What was important was that Luis Díaz triumphed.

FC Barranquilla therefore became aware of him. And before “his slim physique, which is reminiscent of the cyclist Nairo Quintana,” as Paz says, could become his downfall because he was physically inferior in duels, Luis Díaz moved on to the city’s other club, Junior Barranquilla.

Luis Díaz trains with weights every day, says his father

There he worked even more specifically on his physique, on building muscles and on a beneficial diet. At the same time, his biotype prevented muscle mass from growing and individual fibers from becoming thicker, says Paz. He knows that Luis Díaz still works with weights every day. The first piece of furniture in Díaz’s house every time he changes location is a multifunctional gym station, which he works on every day. “He is very focused, ambitious, very disciplined and organized,” says dad Mane Díaz.

In these traits, Mane Díaz recognizes the deeper reason why his son was and is doing so well at FC Porto, FC Liverpool and FC Bayern. “He has always been popular – with his coaches, his teammates, in the cities he moved to. Our pride is that Luis left Colombia and there is not a single country that doesn’t love him. That he upholds the name of Colombia and is a good representative of his homeland.”

This happened to Mane Díaz himself at least once. At the end of October 2023, when he was kidnapped on the street by a commando from the left-wing extremist guerrilla organization “Ejército de Lineración Nacional” (ELN). Not only he, but also his wife Celia, who was immediately released, suffered a real shock.

The wave of empathy that greeted Luis Díaz and his father Mane back then was gigantic. Especially after Luis Díaz pulled up his jersey after scoring a goal for his then club Liverpool and showed a T-shirt that said “Libertad para Papá”, “Freedom for Dad”.

It broke the kidnappers’ necks.

“Look at what your son did,” the kidnappers said, Mane Díaz told a podcast called a few months ago Criminal Conduct (Criminal behavior): “Now we have to hand you over as quickly as possible.” After a total of twelve days in captivity, Díaz Sr. was released again.

Since then he has enjoyed life, his son and currently the World Cup in North America.

He no longer knows what he was thinking when he held Luis, his second son, in his arms for the first time. Mane says he suspects he was hoping his son would be the future. That’s how it happened. Luis changed his life, economically, psychologically and spiritually. Above all, he is now the most famous Colombian and is ready to challenge Cristiano Ronaldo and do everything he can to ensure that Colombia’s “Tricolor” advances to the knockout phase as first in the group. “Luis is in a good mood,” says Mane Díaz. That could mean a lot for the game against Portugal.