“It was a lovely day. Better than I ever dreamed of“This is how Gonzalo Caballero (Madrid, 1991) summarizes all the emotions that on Saturday, in Navalcarnero, swirled under his suit of lights, on his return to the arenas. He did, he returned 595 days after suffering a serious, very serious caught, in Las Ventas, on October 12, 2019. “I came to assume my death, “he confessed. In fact, it was, dead. Nine minutes. He had a “very serious goring on the inner side of the left thigh with two trajectories: one 30 centimeters upwards and another 25 centimeters backward that cuts the femoral vein and collateral branches.”
Then he saved his life because he inserted his fist into the wound, causing hemostasis. After a long period in the hospital, connected to a dialysis machine and a scar with 118 staples on his leg, he only thought about one thing: his return. His red-and-white heart ruled. Fernando Torres once said it: “Being from Atleti is knowing how to get up”. Fall once and get up two. There is no other. Gonzalo Caballero did it in Navalcarnero.
Three ears, a big door and dozens of winks to Atlético. That filled his task in which the Madrid bullfighter shared the ring with Enrique Ponce and bulls by Juan Pedro Domecq. The square was full, there were many faces that did not want to miss the return of the bullfighter, friends like Borja Garcés, the cry of Atleeeti, Atleeeti in many of his crutches. The Atleti bullfighter, this is how Caballero presented himself to the world in Las Ventas when he wore a walking cape with the embroidered rojiblanco shield, in 2014, after the defeat in Lisbon, “I couldn't not go out without him that day when I felt more about Atleti than ever”, he was finally able to celebrate on the sand a team triumph of his life, LaLiga, and his own, this round. When he walked out the front door on his shoulders, he held tightly to a red and white scarf.