He was born in Córdoba, played in Atlanta and Rosario Central, he started as a DT (and became champion) in El Canalla, left his unalterable mark at Gimnasia La Plata, went through River, but Carlos Timoteo Griguol is synonymous with Ferro Carril Oeste. It was there that he deepened his method, won two titles (National 82 and 84), and became a symbol of the club's golden age, which swept all disciplines, touched 50,000 members and was even awarded by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Sport Organization) for making “the dissemination of the sport and physical education a true institutional example”.
In the book “Play Ferro”, its author, Pablo Abiad, goes back and forth between his experiences at the club and the most glorious moments in its history, from the Happy Holidays, the colony that left its mark in tens of thousands of childhoods; to the table of illustrious people composed of Griguol, León Najnudel (founder of the National League of basketball), Julio Velasco and Adrián Paenza, among others; a true power plant of ideas that served as a platform for Argentine sport.
“Here is a magical and, why not, a little mysterious journey: what makes us fans of a club? From a club like Ferro Carril Oeste, too. And more importantly: how much does that love for the t-shirt and its derivatives influence our life”, is what the work seeks to answer. Ideal for Verde fans, of course, but also unmissable for those who consider their club as their second home and not just as a seat in the stalls every 15 days.
MUSIC AT LA PELOTA
Doña Mafalda, Griguol's mother, almost killed him once she found out that her brother was crawling to go play ball. Timothy, aged 12 or 13, had convinced his parents that, instead of working among fruits and vegetables, they would let him take music lessons at the academy of Bartolo Beltramino, an important teacher in Barrio Alberdi. They bought him an accordion on piano. When he left for classes in the afternoon, he would walk a few blocks away and deviate to a field: he left the accordion under a tree and stayed until the time of the turn hitting the ball instead of the keys. “Until my mother crossed paths with Don Bartolo and asked him what had happened to Carlitos who didn't go to classes anymore... What ran with the shoe!” , Cuqui, Timoteo's younger sister, laughed.
THE UNKNOWN NICKNAME
In Las Palmas they remember that Timoteo's father had the vigor of a bull, with the hardened hands of those who dawn working the land. They say that he played barefoot and did not skimp on murras. They did not call him by the name: Owl, they said to him, because he looked steady, piercing. It was inevitable that his only son would inherit the nickname. Carlos Timoteo Griguol, midfielder, successful coach, crack trainer, in Córdoba it was always Lechucín, Lechuza chico or, simply, Lechuza. That's what they kept calling him every time he returned to the neighborhood of the quinteros, for the end of the year, the roasts or the parties.
THE “TEST” FOR PLAYERS WHO SMOKED
At the age of 10 he smoked for the first time. He went to the oratory of Don Bosco to learn religion and, as a reward, play a bite with friends. In the house they gave him 15 cents for the collective; he kept them and used the coins to buy blonde cigarettes. Until one afternoon he was invited to a black one. He was so dizzy that, when he returned home, he locked himself in the bathroom, said that he was not hungry and went to sleep until the next day. As a technician I would smoke very occasionally, never in public and less on the court. If he found out that any of his players smoked, he would not mark it; he would put him to the test in training, to see if he was able to endure the cigarette with the demands of professional football.
HOW WAS HIS CHARACTERISTIC GESTURE BORN
He trained the kids in Central for two years. Already retired, he told El Gráfico: “I am passionate about directing and playing. But the nicest thing about directing is teaching the boys. Not only how to stand on a court, but also teach them things about life, personal hygiene, study, responsibilities.”
At that time he patented another of his symbols: the blow to the chest of players when they went out on the playing field. That blessing became popular when Gimnasia almost won champions, in 1995, because the matches were played on television. But he released it as a young man, in Rosario. “It seems that in winter, when they were training in the morning, it was two or three degrees below zero. And there were no long sleeves. When he saw that the boys were curling up in the cold, he began to ask them to put their breasts and hit them with his palm like that, open. It gave them strong, huh? Sometimes they put their faces. It hurt a little, but they were getting cold,” said Poy.
THE FIRST PICKET IN FOOTBALL
Hector Raul Cuper was always very measured. He played for Ferro between 1976 and 1988 and his teammates agree in describing him as one of the most serious and introverted of all those campuses. What a freak: in 1983, El Gráfico surveyed 100 footballers about who they were going to vote for President and, while the rest were debated between radicals and Peronists, he was the only one who chose Álvaro Alsogaray, the candidate of the Democratic Center Union. On the court, Cabezón was a cerebral defender, elegant, who committed few infractions and, if he had to protest to the referee, he approached him calmly and with his hands behind him in a sign of respect. A kind of the most correct, who neither Griguol nor the rest of the players expected to react as he did in the 1981 preseason.
Ferro had just completed a campaign without problems of relegation and was waiting for the set-up for a new championship. As in the summer of 1980, when he took office, Griguol chose the mountains of Córdona: the Luz y Fuerza hotel in Villa Giardino. In the optimality of the new coaching staff, this background work, in January, was essential to install in the players the physical capacity necessary to perform as airplanes until December, sustaining without injury the demands of the tactical scheme that Timothy devised.
They made them sweat in buckets. But without those preseasons, for example, Ferro would not have been able to deploy the pressing with which he messed up the exit of the contracts. The physical trainer, Luis Bonini, who was most responsible for those two weeks of effort, made them climb the mountains, go down the mountains, run between hills, surround them, put bites, crunches, push-ups. While many clubs still underestimated this kind of training, Ferro did up to a triple shift: strong in the morning, another time after the nap and a closing session, usually with a ball, for the sunset. One of the training sessions included jogging with stones loaded in both hands. The older ones didn't take it easy.
One morning they went to Estancia El Rosario, in La Cumbre, thirteen kilometers from Villa Giardino. It was the height of the high season, so they left early so that the players would at least not burn out. Some sections were made on the side of the road and others on internal roads, dirt, in the Punilla Valley. When they arrived, liquidated, he went to find another bus to continue with the exercises in another place. It was the day when Cuper, always so restrained, lost his composure. “Enough, old man, this is inhumane... You can't take it anymore! They are killing us,” he shouted to Bonini, throwing himself in front of the bus, on the asphalt, ready to lead the picket line.
The versions disagree as to whether Professor Bonini, who was hot, took it seriously or let it go. But the routine of the preseason remained to the millimeter and the Cabezón Cuper ended up on the mic, like the rest.
THE FLOCK IS SACRED
Once, Ferro's players had to run from La Cumbre to the San Jerónimo Dam, seven kilometers one way and seven kilometers back along a steep road, made of gravel and mud. Silvio Sotelo, a veteran who played in all positions except goalkeeper, had his shoes pierced from stepping on so much stone. When the circuit was completed, the Bolivian Aguilar asked to be congratulated because, he said with his tongue out, “he had received himself as a goat.
Another lap they ran up the Uritorco, the sacred mountain of the local Indians, 1900 meters high. Bonini separated them into two: forward, the platoon of the slow ones (the archers, Cacho Saccardi, Rocchia) and, behind, the quickies (Crocco, Juárez and Carlos Arregui). The mission was to summit all together. The same thing Griguol remarked them every day: “When they arrive at the club, they don't fall to the court one by one to train; they get together in the locker room, wait there and they all go out together in a group, at the same time. At the beginning or at the end of a match, the same.” But on the foot of the Uritorco, under the January sun, the heaviest were stained. What the fastest did as they reached them was to take out a diver and put one on each side; the stragger was supported by the garment at the waist, pulled each one of a sleeve and towed to the top of the hill. And they came together. Sacrifice, solidarity, this is how the Ferro of the eighties was shaped.
THE HUMBLEST AWARD IN HISTORY AFTER THE UNDEFEATED TITLE AT NACIONAL 82
The celebration was to take place four months later, in the Etchart, without hurry or pomp, Ferro style. But a few days after winning the championship, the leaders wanted to organize a more intimate dinner for the players, the coaching staff and their women. There was dinner, dancing until the early hours and a little surprise.
Brandoni told me that the only personal mention of the speech was for Carlos Timoteo Griguol. At the end of 1981, the renewal of the contract of the coaching staff had been much discussed. There were leaders who felt that the coach's salary was too high and that it could be a counterweight to Ferro's multi-sport development plan. On the night when the issue was discussed in the Board of Directors, Leyden - determined to keep Timothy as it should be - was formally on leave. His peers from the Board of Directors did not allow him to enter the meeting and left him smoking in the hall, with his ear glued to the door. Vice President Etcheverri was in charge of taking the contract forward.
That is also what Leyden recalled in his speech. The players took the opportunity to sing to the coach what the fans were chanting every Sunday. “Come, come, sing with me, that a friend you will find, that with the hand of Timothy, we will all turn around.”
Griguol, a great driver, was sitting at one of the tables with his wife Betty. The players, in suits and ties, also with their partners, had that minute to return to the student climate of the campuses, which until that time of the night had been suspended. Timothy went along with them, balancing the indexes to the beat like the conductor he was.
Silence returned and Leyden resumed the speech. And by way of closing, he announced that he was going to give a special recognition. He paused, the players paid more attention. They called them one by one, in an order that no one remembers. They looked at each other, somewhat puzzled, when they saw what Ferro gave them that night to be champions: a ball bearing. Not a cup, not a medal, not a plaque: a wooden bearing.
There is dissent about the message with which the gift should have been interpreted. Leyden died in 2022; Secretary Kriscautzky, in 1995, and Etcheverri, in 1994. According to Víctor Marchesini, they wanted to convey to them the idea that they had to use the ball bearing in whatever came, think, be intelligent. Rocchia interpreted it as an allegory of austerity: “So that we understood that we were going to have to keep peeling our asses well.” For Garré it was “like a joke”. I didn't find any members of the squad who kept the bearing.
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