When we meet in café 6 IX, overlooking the Estádio da Luz, the dark circles of “Nico” betray the lack of sleep. The day before, he went into Benfica’s match against Alvalade and had to follow the slow pace of the Second Circular, reserved for visiting club supporters in games considered high-risk. Like this one, where the club where he captains the hockey team could have won their 38th football title.
We ordered coffee and Carlos Nicolía started the journey through his memories, telling that he was playing in Italy when he was discovered in 2014 by a Benfica scout, during a “Champions” match. “I was there in Valdagno for ten years and I knew that to win something important you need a big club, so I didn’t hesitate.” Now, on the cusp of completing a decade wearing the red jersey (a point he will reach in August), the captain of Luz’s hockey team remembers — at a time of big decisions — that it’s much easier was to adapt to Lisbon then when he switched to Argentina for Italy. “Everything was good here: the weather, the people, the club. I arrived at a very special time in my personal life, I was traveling alone with my 3-year-old son Cris, and Benfica was like a family… But really, a family,” he emphasises.
“Nico,” as colleagues and friends affectionately call him, had just become a widower and had already spent nearly two years balancing the life of a professional hockey player with the needs of a baby – “my wife became seriously ill and had to be hospitalized ; she was a fighter, but in the end she couldn’t overcome the disease,” she says, taking more time to choose the words of a language that is not her own, but that she just wants to speak, as emotion makes her memory pain. Then he goes to recall the happiest memory: his son waking up, just arrived in Lisbon, to discover that it was sunny. “When I would send him to kindergarten in Italy, it was always grey, rainy and he was so happy,” he recalls.
“Even though it’s a huge club, a huge building – you walk into Estádio da Luz and it has an incredible feeling, it’s overwhelming – at the same time it’s very familiar and it was a surprise.” That friendship and feeling of the club like home becomes apparent every time a teammate and friend arrives at the café the day before and exchanges hugs and impressions on Sporting-Benfica’s nerves, in football. Carlos follows everything that is part of Luz’s club life and his bond has grown even stronger with his children, now two – Cristiano, aged 15, and Roman, aged 7, both ardent Benfica fans and already athletes at the club . He himself says he comes from Boca, but it is Benfica who makes his heart beat faster. “I became even more adept in front of my kids, but Panchito Velázquez (considered one of the best players ever, also an Argentinian and Benfica player) told me it was, it’s a lot of emotion. I didn’t understand until I arrived – the first time I saw Otamendi was incredible,” says the captain who won two national championships, two Portuguese cups, a Europa League and an Intercontinental Cup with Benfica.
His wife, Flávia, is also from Argentina. They grew up together and met again while he was playing in Lisbon. The parents continue to live there, but the children are Portuguese and what they love about their heritage comes down to the vacations they give in San Juan. And when the kids feel at home here, “Nico”, the chicken dad that he is, doesn’t even think about leaving.
the passion of hockey
Carlos Nicolía comes from San Juan, an Argentine province that borders Chile and is a kind of hockey capital. “It’s a small town, it has about 300,000 people and pretty much everyone is playing, not even very close to football, but there’s a hockey pavilion everywhere you look,” he describes. For someone born to a doctor father and a sociologist mother, with three college-educated brothers—a lawyer, a doctor, and a psychologist—the news that he wanted to make hockey his life wasn’t the easiest thing for the family to swallow.
Following in the footsteps of his friends, “Nico”, as befits his age, stepped into the pavilion and began skating. He could not even read yet and became obsessed. “I went to school, played soccer and basketball with other kids and stuff, but I was always thinking about hockey and asking my mom if I could go play. I skated all the time and went to every game I could see, whether it was from my team or not.” His team was Olimpia and as he grew up he started to stand out because he was called to important matches, bigger competitions. At the age of 14, a coach called her mother back to reality.
“I said to him: ‘If Nico wants, he can come to Europe.’ And as soon as I heard that, I knew that’s what he wanted.” It wasn’t long before a club from Coruña saw him and called Spain, but his parents made it a condition that he complete his studies in Argentina. Even if he didn’t listen to his father’s pleas to graduate – “Maybe he would have been an architect, today I think he really liked it” – without finishing high school, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He did, even though he had to use all his perseverance to convince the chemistry teacher that he deserved to graduate. And at the age of 17, with 12th completed, he went solo to Spain – finally to Girona, where he would stay for a year, before moving to Italy’s Valdagno and discovering that not everything was butterflies. “It wasn’t like playing with friends, there was a lot of competition, there were injuries, there were friends who were angry that they weren’t selected…”
Carlos admits that he always valued the money he could receive less than what a club could give him in terms of growth, which could improve him as a person. “If I’m doing well, I’ll be better, train better,” he says, comparing this happiness and responsibility to having a child. “It’s a very good thing, an incredible joy, but also a huge responsibility.”
He says he himself changed as a professional when his son was born: “I was very bloodthirsty, I was on top of the referee, I got into trouble, but then it wasn’t just about me.” And then came the most difficult moment of his life, which he also considers transformative: “I suddenly had to be a father and mother, living with two extreme emotions, the joy that he began to talk, to walk; and on the other hand Celina was sick, hospitalized… It grew overnight, I had to wake up in the middle of the night, I slept as best I could, ate what I could, followed Cris’s schedule of sports routines again. my son needed it, I did it. And what was my worst personal year was the best of my career.” Until he arrived at Benfica, with a mission to take hockey to football level.
And here he still wants to stay and play, even if he admits that he will have to leave in a few years. “I always said I would leave at 38 – that’s a lot of years, I started at 4… – but Benfica has everything to extend our career. Now I don’t think I want to play beyond 40” , he says – without much conviction. , I add, that I interpret the passion for the game and for the Luz club in every word.
father’s advice
“I’ve had colleagues over the last few years who are 20, 21 years old and I recognize myself in them and I always say the same thing: come, train, play and strive to always get better. But study, don’t stop studying, because a career in sport doesn’t last forever and one day you get old for the sport but young in life and want to do more. It’s not a matter of having money or not, it’s feeling useful.”
He says clubs also have a responsibility to open their players’ eyes, to get them to study, no matter how well they play. “Even in life they often just want them to see that, football or whatever, there’s no school, no girlfriends, no friends… and that’s hard because we’re talking about kids. And that’s why sometimes they get even fed up and give up or do something stupid. You see your brother is in love, your friends go to college and go out, they go on vacation or to parties, and you are alone or surrounded by old people. Being a sportsman must often working to look like an 18 year old, think like a 40 year old and live like an 80 year old.”
That experience that he felt first hand and his father’s phrase when he saw him leave for Europe as a professional hockey player – “Are you not going to do anything else?” – echoes today in the advice he dispenses to the young. And also “Nico”, 37 years old, follows them. Five years ago he started exploring possibilities and when it was too late to try Architecture, he didn’t stray far from the field. “I set up a company in Italy with a Brazilian partner, who is a friend of mine, with floors – but it was a difficult wall to jump over, because everyone I spoke to at the company turned up their nose, because they only saw me saw as a hoquist… I started going to the gym, finding sports that I can do until later in the day And I’m studying English – something my mom always wanted me to do – and trying to sign up for a course at the Portuguese Football Federation, because I want to try out other things. And now in September, maybe I’ll take a sports management course, I’m already reading everything I get about it,” he reveals. At 60, he still doesn’t want to be seen as just a hockey player — “small environments don’t foster an open mind,” he says.
What if the kids want to pursue a sports career like him? “Sometimes they tell me they want to be a footballer, that they are going to be the next Guedes or Félix. And I just tell them to study!” He laughs, aware of the irony of embodying his own father’s concerns more than 20 years ago. Above all, he wants to give them the tools and education to be well-educated and independent. “I wasn’t like that…”, he says again, listening to his father in his own words.
Source: DN
