The second shadow of Ricardo Bochini

"...The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, met his own image walking in the garden (...) for know there are two worlds of life and death: one that which thou beholdest; but the other, is underneath the grave, where do inhabit.

The shadows of all forms that think and live, till death unite them and they part no more..."

(Percy Shelley, "Prometheus Umbound")

Since his debut in 1972, when he was 18, to his retirement in 1991, Ricardo Bochini only played for Independiente de Avellaneda, his only club, the "Red Devil of Avellaneda" was his only club, from the beginning to the end, and all over 19 years.

Hero of one Diego Maradona, and owner of a ductility which was comparable to one Michel Platini, or the trequartista devices of one Roberto Baggio, and yet being different to them, Ricardo Bochini, "El Bocha", he showed the impossible dribbling, the millimetric pass to leave the forward one on one against the goalkeper, the creativity in the attack during interminable Sundays...

Maximum idol in the history of his club, the red shirt and the "10" on his back were the seal of a Bochini who won many cups with Independiente -continental and intercontinental-, and even a World Cup with the national team, in 1986...notwithstanding

notwithstanding a strange fact always would accompany the Bochini's presence on a football field, fact which was as denied as confirmed: 

his body projected a second shadow on the grass, sort of ghastly doppelganger

sombre alter ego which always was after the agile, 1'68 figure, all over the green field

because always there was a second shadow chasing his shadow, but...which one of both was his shadow?

Which one, in this physical arcane. In this set of duplicates was his real shadow.

Because this fantasm, guest or infernal visitor, it followed the Ricardo Bochini's movements at each stadium where he would play

Bochini never saw it.

...His improbable dribblings or his mastery of the footballing strategy sometimes looked like illogical: 

the Bochini's response to the gravitational laws was highly illogical

as illogical as this enigmatic second shadow, that bilocation.

That presence.
 

Because the Bochini's possession of consumate skills as midfielder was always enclosed into a cone of doubts.
Because his full command of the ball and profound conceptual comprehension of the match's keys were always darkened by this eerie other I, this incomprehensible spectre who haunted his prodigious evolutions.

 

A sunny afternoon of 1991, Independiente played Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, in Avellaneda

a while after the match would begin, the Ricardo Bochini's second shadow started getting paler furtively as the minutes went by, acquiring progressively an indistinctly dim tone, fading away, slowly, vanishing to eventually re-appear; to languish again, to re-appear again

nevertheless its momentary returns, the second shadow was losing more and more intensity with every minute.
 

Nevertheless its momentary returns.
Notwithstanding its momentary returns.

Three minutes to the end of the first half, Pablo Erbin, an obscure Gimnasia's defender, committed a tremendous foul on a Bochini's leg

the infraction was outraging and Erbin was sent off, but Bochini was still fallen on the grass, tranced in pain

his knee was broken in pieces.

 

A moment later, Ricardo Enrique Bochini, El Bocha was taken off the field on a litter, it was the day of his retirement, 5/5/1991, and he was 37.
 

Seconds before entering the ambulance which would take him to the hospital, a Bochini's leg, which was hanging from the litter, projected only one, unequivocal, definitive shadow. 

On the floor.