Jaime Moreno and the 'Tahuichi Dream'

11/11/2008 1:53 PM by Cris Cruz

Argentine journalist Emmanuel Quispe recently visited the famed Tahuichi Aguilera Soccer Academy in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. We wanted to share this article (translated from Spanish) he sent us about one of Tahuichi's graduates, Jaime Moreno. Here, MLS's leading goalscorer tells of his beginnings in the sport and his time at Tahuichi Aguilera.

Tahuichi: green hope

The predominant green is a sight to see. Anywhere you look you’ll see that color in this eastern Bolivian city, which is said to lay under the purest sky in America. There, in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where Jaime Moreno has his heart; where he kicked his first ball; where he muddied his first jersey playing in open pastures; where he learned what it is to scream a goal. There, where he started writing his story...the soccer academy Tahuichi Aguilera.

Tahuichi (“large bird” in the tupí-guaraní dialect) is a cry of hope in the middle of a desert where the leaders of Bolivian soccer think about the now, instead of realizing that children are the future. It’s a promise that was dreamt about and blindly believed in by Rolando Aguilera Pareja, founder 30 years ago of the “best soccer school in the world” according to Argentine great Diego Armando Maradona, and which was named “Ambassador of the sport in America” by the Organization of American States (OAS), “Goodwill Ambassador against drugs” by the United Nations and candidate to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and 1998.

Currently, the academy is institutionally consolidadted into the “Gran Villa del Niño Feliz” (Great Village of Happy Kids), contructed as a home for youth and visited daily by around 3,000 kids between the ages of 3 and 18. It is home to another fifty, mostly low-income and in-need youth, who are provided with medical care, education and recreation through soccer, and dream of someday being a “Marco Etcheverry” or a “Jaime Moreno”, two of the great jewels which gave world prestige to this cradle of soccer players.

Surrounded by an endless number of trophies in his office (he has more than 100 international titles), the leader of Tahuichi, Rolando Aguilera Gasser, says that “what we’ve been doing is carrying on the work that the founder started and entrusted us to do so that his spirit can live on in the academy”. He also confesses: “It’s an enormous satisfaction and elation, above all personally, to see that the work of my father, who sadly is no longer with us, still lives on, after he worked so hard to inspire and create this institution out of nothing, which promoted Bolivian soccer to an internationl level and gave his own country an important sense of self-esteem”.

Tahuichi is constantly visited by various leaders, coaches and trainers that come from all over the world looking to open similar institutions. “We’ve always been open with the belief that multiple schools are required because through sport you can provide a myriad of opportunities to children to avoid all the wrongs and the vices of the modern world, and that way developing a good citizen,” says Aguilera Gasser, who also tells with nostalgia that “dad’s motto was ‘The academy is not a miracle, it exists because of miracles’ and that is more certain every day”. He and his siblings, Tania and Erwin, are the ones in charge of carrying on his father’s dream, of not letting a huge amount of children without a place to call home, and of flying around the world leaving Bolivia’s name in the highest regard.

Thinking back, Aguilera Gasser remembers that the “development of the academy started small, in the backyard of our house, with only one coach, which later expanded with the arrival of our neighbors and friends, and later we found ourselves playing in Sudamericanas and World Cups for over 20 years”. It sounds incredible and even the very president of Tahuichi seems in awe of how the institution has evolved and what it has accomplished: “We didn’t have a field of our own... Imagine creating soccer without a field! That is testament to the creativity and will of the kids living under the stands of the city’s stadium (Ramón Aguilera Costas), which was like a freezer in the winter and like an oven in the summer. Perhaps we didn’t have the necessary tools, but money isn’t everything: the will, the determination and the organization to reach an objective can bring the results and I think that’s the best legacy my dad and Tahuichi have left for Bolivia”.

Confessions of a greatful goalscorer

It’s been 12 years of living in the United States translated into goals in Major League Soccer (MLS), yet when you hear Jaime Moreno talk it’s clear he doesn’t forget his roots – still talking with that “camba” accent from eastern Bolivia – and much less his origins as a soccer player: “One of the things I always mention when people ask me where I came from is Tahuichi and the pride I feel from having been a part of that academy that taught me so much in order to grow as a person and as a player. Any time I’m in Santa Cruz I stop by for a visit. They’ve grown a lot; now they have their own ‘village’, dormitories, it’s really beautiful”. At the same time, D.C. United’s living legend makes sure to mention the academy’s founder: “Roly is a person who I’ll always remember; he supported us, helped us, gave us advice, and it’s because of him that Tahuichi got to where it has been and where it’s at.”

A testament of his sincerity, the all-time leading goalscorer in the MLS with 122 goals not only confesses that he didn’t keep track of his goals, but that at the beginning of his MLS career he wasn’t sure he had made the right decision: “I got to Washington on a Sunday, there was a home game that day and I was a substitute on the bench, even though I knew I wasn’t going to play. It was a disaster! ‘What did I do! What did I get myself into?!’ I would ask myself. I was coming from England and you didn’t live with the same intensity. I thought I had made the wrong decision, but thank God that wasn’t the case. Now it’s different because we have the best supporters’ groups in the League and between 18,000 to 20,000 people come out to our games. Besides I had signed a contract for two years and my plan was to go back to Europe...and look at me still here, after 12 years”.

Time goes by and while the Bolivian talks about his past with the academy, he remembers more memories and stories, one in particular very interesting, one of those worthy of a movie script: “When we got to Reading, England to play a supposed tournament, there was nothing and they person who was going to pay us had vanished. We stayed for a week so we could use our return plane tickets but we didn’t have a place to stay or anything. We had to sell our jerseys, ask for help at a home for the elderly and...even play for hamburgers with the kids from McDonald’s! If we scored more than ten goals on them, they’d give us two for each goal. We made like 15 because we were so hungry! We lost a few pounds those days, eating some cheese and a bottle of milk they’d give us for breakfast. It was very interesting and very hard too”.

Moreno could very well be a paradigm of the common saying ‘Nadie es profeta en su tierra’(No one is a prophet in their country). He admits it himself, although nowadays with internet and MLS matches being broadcast, everything is easier and in Bolivia you get news you didn’t get before. However, he still feels a little bit of resentment: “In my best years of soccer here, the National Team never gave me a chance and it hurt a lot. It was like this league didn’t exist. It hurts because, more than anything, everyone wants to play for their National Team, and I think maybe it was a little bit because once I said I didn’t want to play in La Paz anymore (3600 meters above sea level), simply because I didn’t want to go if I wasn’t going to play well so that’s why I would prefer if someone who was already adapted to those conditions played.

The Tahuichi Dream

Like many of the youngsters that knocked on the academy’s doors, Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno came to Tahuichi and started showing signs of extraordinary talent with the ball from a very young age. “You could say that like Brazil has Pelé, and Argentina has Maradona, Bolivia has Etcheverry. He is the charismatic standard, a soccer player that came after many generations and marked an era of Bolivia’s soccer,” affirms Aguilera Gasser. About Moreno, he declares: “Similarly, he jumped into professional soccer at a very young age, with club Blooming, and immediately went abroad. Now we see how he has matured with D.C. United and the American league, becoming the leading goalscorer, a standard of greatness and surely a future hall of famer”. “Jaime, at the same time, is an example for children of how to lead a good family life because he has had real challenges; a player always has highs and low and he did: when he was in the lowest point he showed he could also reach the highest. I think that’s one of his great virtues, that spiritual force that makes him into a world-class man,” he added.

“Some players have soccer in their veins and Etcheverry is one of them. He played for fun and made the ball ‘small’; he’d get out of school and go play in the streets. Jaime, conversely, always wanted to play competitively, he wouldn’t give away anything. These are both traits of great soccer players who made it far and that’s how they won all kinds of titles,” says Ciro Medrano, current general manager of Tahuichi y former coach of two 10-year old kids named Etcheverry and Moreno.

All the kids at Tahuichi have someone to look up to. In fact, it’s almost pointless to ask who, since they always respond: “Marco Etcheverry”. That’s why it’s such a strong emotion for them to be able to hug these players they look up to and were once a “Tahuichi” like them. “The kids come to the academy with dreams. We call it ‘The Tahuichi Dream’, which is that chance of being a great star like Marco and Jaime. That’s why it’s so great for the kids when they visit us, because they really are seeing their idols, a person who spends time with them and motivates them to keep growing,” Aguilera Gasser said. And he added: “It’s important to always motivate youth through examples, and these athletes are examples for kids to always keep dreaming.”

Medrano also says that “we take on trainings with the idea of being the best. Once the kids put on a Tahuichi jersey and they start winning tournaments, they realize it’s worth the sacrifices of preparation and giving up certain things. Throughout our 30 years, if you wore a Tahuichi jersey, you felt like a champion.”

Happiness comes from the kids

Among so many titles, there is a common and repeated question you ask yourself after seeing the magnitude of Tahuichi: Why is all the success found at the youth level and not in the older divisions? On one hand, Moreno speculates that “maybe it’s because of the ideals that Roly taught us: learn how to be a winner, to fight, when you start from the bottom it’s a tougher climb. We were like a family, we’d live two or three months together.” Medrano, meanwhile, says with emotion: “A man like Rolando made you feel like a champion, that winning mentality he had was contagious, and perhaps we already had it but it was dormant. But he let us know that we could come in first and win, become someone, and he showed us that through hard work, discipline and organization”. On the other hand, Aguilera Gasser explains: “At Tahuichi these kids receive specialized sports planification, training and support as they develop in a winning environment. Then they ‘graduate’ and go to different clubs, which we compare to going away to college, where they don’t necessarily follow the same regimen they had here. So if someone has a really good high school background but go on to a mediocre college, their continued development will be relative, but if they go to a good university he will develop into a great player”. Additionally, the founder’s son says that “doors are opening for our kids to go abroad from our academy to a ‘world class institution’ because unfortunately Bolivian soccer is not very well organized and if kids are not pushed with new challenges they lose a lot of the values they have learned”.

In Bolivia, there’s a common theme to all talks about the National Team: the 1994 World Cup. For Bolivians, having made it there was like touching heaven, but unfortunately they live off memories. That was the jumping off point for a soccer discussion that keeps happening until today. “Playing that World Cup was a milestone and it served as incentive for growth, like when Bolivia, with Tahuichi, was champion of the 1986 U16 South America tournament, but for that to happen again there must be better planning. Bolivia didn’t know how to take advantage of that 15 minutes to implement bigger things in our soccer program,” declares Aguilera Gasser. Meanwhile Moreno, who was part of that National Team, talks honestly and says: “We’re lacking a lot of things in the National Team, things we know were lost by our own fault, because we settled. We settled for just reaching the World Cup and then we started to deteriorate until we got to this humiliating situation in which we don’t expect anything anymore. The hardest part is maintaing the level, especially in a situation like the World Cup qualifiers. We couldn’t do it and it was a great fall. It cost us clothing and TV sponsorships and the federation lost a lot. It’s everyone’s fault, players and coaches.”

A positive that can be taken from those years, Medrano says, is that “in the four years of that tough job of qualifying for the US World Cup, 23 players from Tahuichi formed part of the roster for the Bolivian team. That’s when you realize how valuable the academy is to national soccer.”

“Dreams always push us to look for new challenges,” explains the president of Tahuichi while talking of their current challenge of building a mini-stadium to host the Mundialito Paz y Unidad, an Under 15 tournament where teams like Argentina’s River Plate and Boca Juniors, Spain’s Real Madrid and the National Teams of Brazil and the United States, among others, have participated. “We’ve shown that along with exporting talent, we can also bring it here and organize one of the most prestigious tournaments of the region, which we’ve already been celebrating for more than 13 years,” he added.

Long live Tahuichi!

Though Bolivia’s most prestigious academy isn’t tired of collecting trophies all over the world, unfortunately it suffers from a very delicate economic situation. That’s why it’s time to celebrate at the “Gran Villa del Niño Feliz” with the inauguration of their extended housing structures, with more bedrooms and lounges, which were donated by the American embassy. “No national government, now or in the past, has seen the sport or Tahuichi as something to invest money in; we have been awarded the “Cóndor de los Andes”, the highest Bolivian honor, and many other awards, but there have been too many promises and Tahuichi has suffered all of that throughout it’s long existence. We knock on doors constantly and thankfully several Bolivian entreprises and institutions have helped us to be able to continue, but I think the work done in schools like this should be a part of the state because we’re rescuing and serving our youth and because of that it’s necessary to have support from the government so we don’t cease to exist,” says Aguilera Gasser. “I hope we never have to close our doors because thousands of kids would see themselves abandoned and Bolivia would have to at last see the meaning of it all and what this academy brings to our society. I’m sure someday some government will realize this and help the sport, the youth, and Tahuichi and other schools like it”, he concluded.

The future is here...

You can feel the confidence in Jaime Moreno’s words when he talks about the plans for his future. While some of his peers still don’t know what their plans will be after retiring from playing, he has it very clear.

--Do you realize alredy what you’ve accomplished or will it hit you once you retire?

--Honestly no. Recently I was thinking, I’m very critical and I’m never satisfied. I didn’t think about it much at first but the day I broke the record it hit me. Bolivia had never called me so much. That was it. Because no one in my country had ever done anything like that, I realized how important it was. For me, the challenge now is to keep being a goalscorer until I retire.

--How much longer do you think you’ll be playing?

--One of the things that Xabier Azkargorta (former Bolivia National Team coach) used to say was that “in soccer, you have to have fun” and until I lose that, if they keep giving me a chance...I also don’t want to be still playing with a walking cane–he says laughing- but I definitely want to end playing well.

--Will you stay in DC or go back to Bolivia?

--I’m staying here. Hopefully I’ll have a job and after I retire, I’ll stay here.

--For everything you’ve done they should give you a lifetime contract like Real Madrid with Raúl and Iker Casillas...

--(Laughter) I wish! We’ll see what happens.

--What’s do you hope for?

--To win a championship –he says without hesitating–. I need one more...you always want one more.

--Your partnership with El Diablo Etcheverry is still very much remembered...

--With Marco I did a lot of great things and people appreciate that. Even though soccer can be very ungrateful and people can forget quickly, they still remember him very well.

--How would you like people to remember you?

--Like the player they knew me as. It’s very simple. Us soccer players, we know the hard part is retiring, but the day has to come. People here can appreciate the work you put in and I’m positive that, in their way, they will always appreciate me and I will appreciate them.

--Are you trying to convince Marco to coach D.C.?

--(Laughter) We’ll see what happens... He can’t decide what he wants to do. He has all the qualities to become a coach but he’s doing other things now. Even I don’t know what he wants. In my opinion he should already be working with D.C., even though he is but more with the youth program. If he doesn’t hurry up, I will! – more laughter – My future is as a coach.

The indelible mark of the 1994 World Cup

The diabolical dribbling of Marco Etcheverry, the luxuries of Julio César Baldivieso and the killer shots of Erwin “Platiní” Sánchez got Bolivia their passage to the United States for their return to the World Cup after 50 long years. But bad luck made them draw the last world champion, Germany, in their first match.

The world’s eyes were fixed on Soldier Field in Chicago, and people were predicting a handy win for the Europeans. There were enough reasons, it was David versus Goliath. However, the team led by Xabier Azkargorta, to everyone’s surprise, kept up with the Germans and even showed ease at times while the Germans despaired.

It was exciting to see the audacity and good play the South Americans were showing, like a tiny country with huge dreams, they took on a world giant and held on, until halfway through the second half when that fatal moment came, in which legendary striker Jürgen Klinsmann got behind the defense and beat goalkeeper Carlos Trucco. There was nothing else they could do. It was 1 to 0, and with that, the relief of some before the amazed looks of others, among them a 19-year old Jaime Moreno, who waited in the substitute’s bench for a chance to play and earn the deserved tie.

--When Azkargorta told you to sub in against Germany in the World Cup, what were you thinking?

--That is one of the things that could kill me and mark me for life. You are so foolish when you’re young. I swear I had no idea what I was doing because I didn’t understand the magnitude of a World Cup. Now when I think about it, I was so foolish... I didn’t take advantage of a World Cup! But unfortunately you learn through your worst mistakes. In England (Middlesbrough), I didn’t do as well because I didn’t train like I should have. Now that I’m 34 years old, I train harder than when I was 17 to maintain my body. These things you learn in time.

--Why do you say you didn’t take advantage of it?

--I was 19. In my mind I knew I should have been a starter because of my strengths and I was very resentful. I was angry because I wasn’t a starter. I’d think “why? It’s not worth it”. And it wasn’t like that.

In the end, Germany won 1-0. While some celebrated the win like it was the final, others cried the defeat like unconsolable children. But after a few minutes those tears of pain became an applause for a Bolivian team that had accomplished something and played their hearts out for the pride of an entire country.

3 Comments

Jaime Moreno

Comments

3 Comments

11/11/2008 6:11 PM by Bolivian DC Fan

Beautiful in English just as it was in spanish. Great translation!
11/11/2008 7:00 PM by Goose

Completely awesome.
11/13/2008 2:50 PM by TCompton

That really is a wonderful story about Bolivia's soccer family. It would truly be amazing if Marco and Jaime remain with DC United and not only help to coach the 1st team, but also help to build United's youth program in to something similar to the Tahuichi acadamy.

Oh, how nice it is to have dreams...

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