Juan Izquierdo collapsed in a game and died five days later. This is his legacy

The death of Juan Manuel Izquierdo has left Nacional de Montevideo, and the whole of Uruguay, in a deep sense of despair.

He died on August 27 at the age of 27, five days after collapsing on the pitch during Nacional’s Copa Libertadores round of 16 match against the Brazilian club Sao Paulo. A week after his tragic passing, those closest to Izquierdo search for answers, hoping to make sense of the senseless. 

“My heart is torn, it’s bleeding,” his wife Selena wrote on social media. Izquierdo leaves behind two children, the youngest of whom was only two weeks old when he died.

“I couldn’t return to the pitch for training. I didn’t have the strength to do it,” said his Nacional team-mate Diego Polenta in the days that followed. 

Then, on Sunday, his club Nacional played against the team he had left to join them, Liverpool de Futbol Club. The players from both sides walked on to Nacional’s Estadio Gran Parque Central pitch wearing shirts that featured Izquierdo’s picture and the badges of both clubs.

There was a moment of silence as the players shook hands. It was eerily quiet. The chanting had stopped. The drums fell silent. When the cameras focused on Polenta, the hard-nosed defender was visibly emotional. It was clear how difficult a moment it was for him and his teammates.

The referee stopped the match in the third minute to honor Izquierdo, who wore the No 3 shirt for Nacional at the time of his death. The sellout crowd rose to its feet to applaud a player who will be remembered for his fighting spirit. Nacional won the match 1-0 from a goal in the 43rd minute by their striker Nicolas Lopez. The 30-year-old celebrated emphatically before raising his arms towards the sky.

The win was a momentary distraction from the trauma endured 18 days beforehand in Brazil.

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On August 22, during a stoppage of play in the 84th minute of a closely contested match against Sao Paulo, Izquierdo began to stumble towards his right. His teammate, Nacional right-back Leandro Lozano, was immediately alarmed and began to gesture towards the benches. As Izquierdo fell to the ground, Lozano’s panic intensified. 

Another Nacional player, defender Nicolas Rodriguez, placed a small package of smelling salt near Izquierdo’s nose, but the player didn’t respond. Players from both teams motioned frantically towards the stadium paramedics to enter the pitch and attend to Izquierdo. 

The massive Estádio do Morumbi, one of the largest stadiums in South America, which can hold nearly 67,000, fell silent. Nacional and Sao Paulo players clutched their heads in a panic. The ambulance darted towards the center circle, where Izquierdo lay motionless. He was placed inside the ambulance two minutes later and was immediately taken to the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in Sao Paulo. 

Sao Paulo’s center forward, the Argentine Jonathan Calleri, arrived at the hospital later that evening. He offered to pay for all of Izquierdo’s medical expenses, handing his credit card to a Nacional team official. Izquierdo died five days later, on the night of the 27th. A statement from the hospital said Izquierdo had died due to cardiac arrest related to a heart arrhythmia.

After Izquierdo’s death, football in Uruguay came to a jarring halt. All matches in Uruguay’s top division were postponed for a week as the nation grappled with the death of a beloved teammate, son and father. As the days passed, the sorrow intensified. Izquierdo and his wife Selena had welcomed their second child two weeks before his sudden death. 

In a series of Instagram posts hours after his passing, Selena described the emotions that engulfed her after losing her husband. “I ask God to give me the strength to continue standing. Today was the worst day of my life.” 

From Izquierdo’s official account, she wrote: “Today I had to say goodbye to my other half, the love of my life. He was Juan Izquierdo to many. He was Juanma to me. My best friend. My husband. The father of my children. A part of me left with you today. You were a great person, noble, loving and without bad intentions. You were an angel on Earth and you’ll be an angel in heaven. I must find strength and go on for our children. 

“I know you fought until the end and that all you wanted was to be with us. I’m going to miss you my entire life and I know your absence will be painful every step of the way. You had so much more to live, my Juanma. I dream about the day when we’re reunited and I see that smile of yours again… I’ll love you forever, warrior. This time we had to lose.” 

On August 29, Nacional held a public wake at their training ground and welcomed hundreds of fans and passersby throughout the day. The hallways where Izquierdo bantered with teammates and staff members had become a place of mourning. A supporter wearing a Peñarol jersey approached a sparse crowd that had gathered outside the facility to pay their respects. Peñarol and Nacional are the two biggest clubs in Uruguay and fierce rivals. Izquierdo had the rare distinction of having played for both clubs. 

After the gentleman had made his way past the somber crowd and towards a makeshift memorial, he placed a Peñarol kit among the flowers and photos of Izquierdo by the main entrance to the training ground. The crowd applauded softly. The impact of Izquierdo’s death has temporarily put aside over a century of hatred between the two clubs. For Izquierdo’s teammates, returning to their daily routines felt nearly impossible.

The Uruguayan Football Association (AUF) declared five days of mourning. Some of Nacional’s players huddled around family in Montevideo, some arranged sessions with the club’s psychologist to talk about what happened and how they could try to process it. When Nacional’s players began to prepare for Sunday’s fixture against Montevideo-based Liverpool F.C., where Izquierdo was crowned league champion in 2023, the pain of their teammate’s death came rushing back.

“I had never experienced anything like this before. It’s obviously like losing a family member,” Nacional captain Polenta told reporters in a press conference. “He was our teammate and we often spend more time with teammates than with our own families. We’re going to remember Juan forever. To walk into the dressing room and not see him there is really difficult.” 

Polenta recalled how difficult it was for him to step back onto Nacional’s training pitches. He said that he was devastated and pondered stepping away from the game of football for good. “I couldn’t return to the pitch. I didn’t have the strength to do it,” he said. “The boys all went through the same thing.”

Polenta has stayed close to Izquierdo’s family since the player’s death. He’s honoring his friend by supporting the family during an unimaginable tragedy. 

“I know what family meant to Juan. I know how he felt about his children,” said Polenta. “I’m like a brother to him now. But he’s gone.”

Luis Suarez, Uruguay’s greatest-ever goalscorer, last week announced his retirement from international football. The week before, he scored a brace during Inter Miami’s 2-0 win over FC Cincinnati and after a well-taken first goal, he lifted his pink Miami kit to reveal a message for Izquierdo. “Fuerza Juan” (Strength for Juan) was written across his undershirt as Izquierdo fought for his life in Sao Paulo.

Suarez opened his retirement announcement by sending condolences to Izquierdo’s family, choking up as he said, “May he rest in peace.”

Sao Paulo players Calleri, Giuliano Galoppo, Michel Araujo, Welington and their captain Rafinha, formerly of Bayern Munich, chartered a private jet and traveled to Montevideo to attend the wake. For sad reasons, Sao Paulo will now forever be linked to Nacional.

“It’s a very difficult moment. I’m at a loss for words,” Rafinha told reporters outside Nacional’s headquarters. “We wanted to be here because we experienced what happened. It happened in our house, in our stadium, and we felt it as if it were our family.” 

In Brazil, Izquierdo’s death has shaken the country. Moments of silence were held throughout Brazil as their football season resumed uninterrupted. When Sao Paulo faced Atlético Mineiro on August 28 for the Copa do Brasil, Sao Paulo wore kits with the Uruguayan’s surname on the back. Nevertheless, the lingering memory of Izquierdo lying helpless on the Morumbi pitch, and the heartbreak that his young family will endure, has not been easily forgotten. 

“He had a daughter and a newborn baby,” said Coritiba head coach Jorginho during his weekly press conference a day after Izquierdo’s death. “I’m a grandfather. I cannot imagine losing a child,” he added, before breaking down in tears. Reaction from around the world of football was seen throughout social media, from teams and players across the globe. Izquierdo’s story, one of perseverance and a pure love for the game, had shown the world that football can still be pure. 

As a 17-year-old, Izquierdo participated in a government program that provided underprivileged children with professional football opportunities. His mother Sandra was a housemaid. His father Nelson was a construction worker. They raised Izquierdo in the modest Nuevo Paris neighborhood of Montevideo. That’s where his passion for football was born, but Izquierdo’s path to Uruguay’s first division was anything but linear. 

“My childhood was me with a ball all day. I didn’t have a cell phone. We didn’t have those luxuries,” Izquierdo told El Pais in Uruguay last year. “I had everything I needed. My father always had a job and my mother took care of us. I didn’t walk around with holes in my shoes.”

He joined Liverpool’s academy but had to divide his time between training and working in construction alongside his father. That commitment outside of football relegated him to the bench at youth level. His father encouraged him to focus on football but Izquierdo didn’t mind spending time with him as a laborer. “I just wanted to keep him company and talk about life,” said Izquierdo. He debuted with Cerro in 2018 and after 32 games was signed by Peñarol, a giant in Uruguay. It was a swift rise for Izquierdo, although he later became a journeyman player, even playing briefly in Mexico for Atletico San Luis.

“I do everything for my family,” Izquierdo said.

Football is rallying round the family he leaves behind. The president of the AUF, Ignacio Alonso, told reporters last week that they will pay Izquierdo’s family the equivalent of his Nacional salary for the next eight years.

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During a recent interview with Brazilian outlet Globo, Izquierdo’s mother Sandra recalled the night her son died. “He didn’t come home,” she said with a pained look on her face. The home she referred to was built brick by brick by Izquierdo and his father. “(Juan) carried bags of sand, bricks. He was exhausted from training but he’d eat, sleep and then come here to help us build the house.”

Juan Izquierdo is remembered as a warrior, a player who embodied the fighting spirit that has defined Uruguayan football for decades. His tragic death has been a reminder, though, about how fragile life can be. Seven months ago, Izquierdo told Nacional’s video team that the side who won a first division title in 2022, led by an inspired Luis Suarez, was like a family to him.

“They’ll always be in my heart,” Izquierdo said.

(Photos: Guillermo Legaria/Anadolu via Getty Images/Ernesto Ryan/Getty Images/DANTE FERNANDEZ/AFP/Design: Eamonn Dalton)