A thread of destiny is often much stronger and more symbolic than a family tie or a simple similarity. And the one connecting the lives of Diego Armando Maradona and Medina isn’t just that both footballers are left-footed. It all begins in Villa Fiorito, the 'shanty town' in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area where both grew up as children.
When, on May 28th, 1999, the current Marseille and Argentina national team defender was born, the Golden Boy was already a man marked by the many events that had turned him into a rock star on loan to the world of sports.
And he was already an absolute legend in his country. Medina himself has acknowledged it: "I was born eight blocks from the house where Diego lived, and his presence is constant. Fiorito is a neighbourhood that breathes football."
Also forged on the dirt pitches of a humble neighbourhood that, in his time, already had some paved streets - unlike his illustrious predecessor - the young Facundo spent his childhood with his family before being signed by River Plate at the start of his teenage years. However, he never completely left his original environment behind.
Surviving the neigbourhood
"We had to survive in the neighbourhood. I had to get myself a cart and work, like everyone else. I’d go out collecting cardboard with the whole crew, with all my uncles. It was a family job, Monday to Friday. We had enough to eat, but you had to work hard," the footballer himself confessed.
His childhood was about training, playing in the street, and going to school, but that didn’t change even when, at 12, he moved to a more affluent part of the city to chase his dream.
Diego, who at 15 left Fiorito to move into a house in the La Paternal neighbourhood offered by the club Argentinos Juniors, would return from time to time to his roots.
Facundo did the same, as a family member recalls: "Even when he was training with River, he’d show up on Saturdays to play in the neighbourhood tournament with the Gauchitos, where he grew up as a kid."
He never stopped loving the place where his heart was from, not even when he had to adapt to a simpler, more structured, and less familiar reality.
In Diego’s name
His work ethic was well known throughout Fiorito, and his call-up to the national team coached by Lionel Scaloni has come after years of struggle and effort.
What’s more, the recent injury to Nicolas Tagliafico could open the door for him to be the starting left-back in Argentina’s opener against Algeria. In fact, it was he who filled that role in the starting lineup during the friendly against Iceland.
As we mark 40 years since the crowning of the ultimate Argentine number 10 at the 1986 World Cup, his compatriot, in every sense, will take part in the global event with the hope of someone carrying a legacy. Villa Fiorito, that garden where the most rebellious flower in world football grew, still lives on in the memory of an entire nation.
A coincidence that could even bring about something not seen in recent times: a national team winning back-to-back World Cup titles, something that hasn’t happened since 1962. The harshest critics might say that, in reality, the Albiceleste will play - at least at first - only in the United States, where Maradona himself suffered the harshest punishment in FIFA’s history.
Romantics, on the other hand, can only dream of another left-footer born in Fiorito, ready to lift the long-awaited trophy four decades later. And, moreover, in the land of those United States that Diego always challenged, for a rematch in his name.
