Club Sportivo Independiente Rivadavia, from Mendoza (Argentina), has just been promoted to the first category of football in its country, after 21 years. The news, obviously, has no relevance to Ecuadorian football, unless we look back at history, that science that today’s novice commentators so hate because it involves will, dedication, patience and a lot of time to look through old newspapers and magazines (they need that time to they use their cell phones and type in search engines looking for tactical formulas to avoid the target, their own and the opponent’s).

For those who seek history as the essence of illustration and as a formula for exploiting its lessons, we write this column. Because Independiente Rivadavia, a club with 110 years of life, is linked to the history of our football, the one that used to export players, but not in today’s number, because there were no businessmen and video players to negotiate with them. The club saw them on the field and appreciated their virtues, talked to the footballer and suggested that he stay.

They were fields of earth and stones; there was no teacher. It was not until 1925 that the Guayas Sports Federation (when it had real leaders) brought in the English coach Herbert Daynti, who left behind useful lessons.

In 1927, Colo Colo from Chile arrived in Guayaquil. To train with them, Humberto from Ambatto volunteered Chuzo Garcés, and they liked his playing, so much so that they took him on a tour they took up north. The first soccer player to play for a foreign team, as part of the official team, was Alfonso Romo Leroux, who signed for América de Cali in 1931.

In 1935, two Colombian teams were in our city: Gregg from Cali and Deportes Antioquia from Medellín. The first, in the match with our Panama, was a young striker who made his debut for the national team at the age of 15, in a match between Liga Deportiva Estudiantetil and Juvenil Esparta from Chile: Alfonso Suárez Rizzo. At 18, Suárez came on board with Gregg and played a season in Colombia.

In 1937, a group of national soccer players traveled to Colombia to participate in a friendly tournament, despite a ban by the National Sports Federation of Ecuador. One of the guests was Independiente Rivadavia, champion of the Mendoza football league (Argentina). In the confrontation with our “pirate” team, as the newspapers of our country called it, two great players of that time shone: Alfonso Suárez and Ernesto Cuchucho Cevallos, the right wing of our team.

At a meeting in La Palma, a traditional Buenos Aires cafe, where the unforgettable Pepito Salcedo Morán was also present, Alfonso Suárez told us that he and Cevallos were approached in the dressing room by the president of Independiente and suggested that they join the team that was going to appear in Central America, the Caribbean and Mexico. Suárez is considered one of the best Ecuadorian footballers in history. This is what two of those who played with him told me: Miguel Roque Salcedo, a brilliant journalist who was the goalkeeper of LDE; and Eli Yoyo Barreiro, midfielder of the same team. The same was confirmed by Ralph del Campo, another very enlightened journalist, and the great Marino Alcívar, who was his teammate in the national team and in Latin America, from Havana.

Ernesto Cevallos was small, but full of skill and mischief. He started as a young player in Panama in 1928, when he was seen in the team of Colón and García Moreno. was half — a midfielder, in modern soccer language — or a right forward. He was capable of every sport, so much so that in 1931, when he had already established himself as a football player, he put on his gloves and fought for the title of the federal tournament: “A truly electrifying finish in the minimum category. The two little gladiators did not give up even for an inch of the field, and if the hand was raised against the representative of Emelec, for many the winner was Panamito”, announced EL UNIVERSO.

In 1933 harmonized as half on the right, was the big figure of the epic game in which Panama, after losing 2-0 to the undefeated Audax Italiana, champions of Chile, celebrated 6-3, achieving a victory that remained in the memory of those who were in the old stadium of Guayaquil that morning.

In 1939, the national team took part in the Copa América for the first time. Suárez and Marino Alcívar – the authors of the first two Ecuadorian goals at the event – ​​impressed the leaders of the Cuban club Hispanoamérica who hired them to travel to Havana. Cuba raised the quality of its tournament with the arrival of great Spanish footballers who fled the civil war. Two Ecuadorians helped their newly promoted club win the Cuban championship.

At the time of the awards, Suárez won the Ballon d’Or as the best player of the tournament and Alcívar won the Golden Boot as the top scorer. Cevallos, on the other hand, after a victorious tour from Panama through Colombia, signed a contract with the Motoristas club, from Cali, along with Luis Merino, Eloy Ronquillo, Jorge Tolosan Laurida and Jorge Peralta.

Alfonso Suárez’s fame has reached a great dimension in Colombia. In 1940, he was to play with the first Argentine team to visit the country: Atlanta from Buenos Aires. Eloy Ronquillo from Guayaquil was already in the ranks of Millos. The leaders asked him to contact Suárez to reinforce them. He accepted, but due to communication problems, it took 20 days to arrive in Bogotá.

He trained for four days with his teammates under the orders of the coach, who was none other than Fernando Paternoster. The vast resources at his disposal enabled him to recruit Paternoster and Argentine players Alfredo Cuezzo, Óscar Sabranski, Vicente Lucifer, Antonio Ruiz Díaz and Luis Timón, earning them the nickname “The Millionaires”. On January 28, 1940, the Colombians defeated the Argentines. Our compatriots Suárez and Ronquillo received the best reviews. Time, from Bogotá, said: “Alfonso Suárez, the famous Ecuadorian soccer player, taught. Suárez was a real ‘poison’ for the Atlanta team, the same ones who were powerless to cancel his quick passes and powerful shots on goal.”

Independiente Rivadavia wanted to take Suárez and Cevallos to Argentina after the long tour in 1937, but both opted for another route. Cevallos spent two years at Atlético Corrales, in Paraguay, in 1940 and 1941. Suárez dazzled Chile in the 1941 South American Championship and was voted the best in his position, along with José Manuel Moreno, a world legend. He moved to Magallanes, from Chile, and then to Green Cross, a team where he played together with another drop: Jorge Chompi Henriques.

Suárez and Cevallos were the first to come to the Argentinian club, now promoted Independiente Rivadavia, who already knew what it was like in the first series. Businessmen did not negotiate their signatures and did not record them because none of that existed. They were simply cracks. (OR)