Less than a year ago, Gustavo Dulanto (Lima, 1995) was without a team and training alone in Peru. Today is the captain of this Sheriff that hallucinated half the planet with the 1-2 at the Bernabéu. Close and very familiar, he receives AS in Tiraspol two days after the second round against Madrid …
Have you already digested what it means to win at the Bernabéu with a team like the Sheriff?
After the game I started to think about everything I had experienced. What it was like to qualify for the Champions League after eight qualifying matches. And then beat Madrid. I always dreamed of playing for Madrid, I cannot deny it. I consider myself a Madridista. Unfortunately we lost the two games against Inter and I told my teammates, “we have to get on our feet”. It is useless to win at the Bernabéu if then we do not qualify for the second round or for the Europa League.
His father Alfonso played for Mérida in 1995-96. A little Spanish will feel, right?
I arrived in Mérida when I was two months old, I don’t remember anything (laughs). I have followed parallel paths with my dad, of whom I am very proud. He also had to go to play in an exotic league at that time, in Cyprus. He went to Spain, I to Portugal …
“Benzema shows you the ball, you think you have it and then it ‘curds’, as we say in Peru”
Gustavo Dulanto, in AS
There, the Boavista teaches him the most thankless of this business …
With a week to go before the market closes, they told me they didn’t count on me. I had to train with the U-23 team with Alberto Bueno, who experienced something similar. He helped me a lot and I am very fond of him. It was shocking for me, I decided to rescind my opponent and I returned to Peru, I had to train alone, on my own. A situation from which I could be reborn here.
I guess he had to Google, like everyone else, where Transnistria was …
Yes, it was! (laughs). I remember I was driving and my representative calls me. “There is a serious offer for you, it is the Sheriff of Tiraspol.” I asked him where that fell. I searched the internet, I found my partner Franck Castañeda on Instagram and he spoke highly of the club and when I arrived I saw that everything I expected was fulfilled. The team, the infrastructures that are spectacular… It all adds up to come to a place that I had never heard of, to say otherwise would be a lie. The name only sounded familiar to me because once they played with Farfán’s Lokomotiv. When I go to Peru it is 35 hours of travel and sometimes three or four stopovers. It’s almost running the Dakar (laughs).
And as soon as he arrives in Tiraspol, he becomes the head of the locker room.
My personality helps me. I am like that, I like to order. They taught me it from a very young age, because I am a defender, and to say things as they are. I tell my teammates that in the game I can speak loudly, but don’t take it to heart. And if they have something to say, let them release it, I love it.
Dulanto poses for AS during the interview.
JAVIER GANDUL
Did you have to throw command to tell your teammates at the Bernabéu that the exchange of shirts for later, that there was a game before?
I changed it with Benzema, but because we won. I had discussed it with my wife, I am like that, if I lose I go straight to the locker room (smile). What’s more, there is a play in which Athanasiadis wins a heads-up against Modric, who blows his face from the ball. Luka asks me for water, I give it to him and I go. My wife told me why didn’t I stay talking to him. That? (laughs). I know what Modric is, but when I play I forget who is in front of it. This is what I tell my teammates, that the only difference between them and us is the color and the shield of the jersey. After that we are the same.
He said in the Bernabéu preview that Benzema “is indecipherable.” The French Sheriff could only score a penalty … Something he did decipher, right?
So many years following Madrid, something had to help me (laughs). That day we were lucky, because they reached us a lot. But we were mentally prepared for it.
“I tell my teammates that the only difference between us from Madrid is the color and the shield of the shirt”
Gustavo Dulanto, in AS
I sense, from his words, that Madrid will have another dose of suffering in Tiraspol.
It is that we depend on ourselves to be in the second round. We are Cinderella, but alive. We are going to leave with the knife between our teeth.
What is more difficult to defend, the intelligence of Benzema or the electricity of Vinicius?
We have seen videos of Madrid and we talked about it. Benzema shows you the ball, it seems that you have it, but in the end he points it to you. Tea curd, as we say in Peru. They are top. Vinicius is in his prime.
I know that you would like to play in Spain or Italy …
That is why I came to Tiraspol, although I never thought it would go so well and so fast …