In a hairdresser’s on Avenida General Flores in Montevideo, all Sporting matches are followed on television. The manager Daniel Zarfino, the father of the Sporting soccer player, who “has a barbaric expense” for having hired “two different cable companies” to ensure that he will always have the retransmission of the meeting of the middle of his three children available. And on Thursday, while the rojiblancos suffered in Lugo, the scissors stopped working at the same time as the television. “It was the 80th minute and the image was cut off. When it came back, I went crazy,” says who began to see that Sporting, with ten, won 0-1 thanks to a goal from Zarfino.
“Not even as a boy have I missed a Gio game. I even left work for a few hours and went with him everywhere. Now I do the same, but on television,” says Daniel Zarfino. On Thursday he even arrived late to the doctor for staying “to see the summary of later, where the goals are repeated.” The motive was important. The consultation could wait. “I spoke to Gio after a while. He was emotional. He came to tears,” says the proud father after Sporting’s long-suffering triumph at Anxo Carro. The same one that ended a streak of seven games without winning. The same one that was achieved based on the faith that characterizes Zarfino’s game. “He has always been passionate, very warrior. He has been injured for weeks, and continues. As we say here, he does not want to lose even the ball (marble),” he emphasizes.
Zarfino’s fighting character comes from his genes. This is how his father tells it, which summarizes the origins of a “humble and hardworking” family. “His mother worked until early retirement (she retired due to back problems) as an administrator in the health -sanitary area- and I started at the age of 16 in the newspaper ‘El Día’ in Uruguay, where I did everything, rewound paper, worked in the archive… Then it closed, I was 23 when Gio was born… I opened the hairdresser’s. I’ve been here for thirty years. I say this because he always saw at home that everyone worked, that we gave our all. Even his sisters. That’s how he is too,” sums up Daniel.
Claudia Calandria, Gio’s mother, is in Gijón these days. She has brought him luck. She could not go to Lugo due to force majeure: “she stayed to take care of her grandchildren.” Because in addition to Rafaela, the only daughter of the Sporting player, Giuliano and Almita, the children of Gio Zarfino’s older sister, Joana, are also in Asturias these days. The house buzzes. On Sunday it is expected that the Zarfinos will cheer on El Molinón. Soon, he hopes to do so too Daniel. “Maybe I can go in January. I still don’t know that. I do know that Gio is loved very much. The whole family is very grateful for the treatment my son is receiving,” says the father.
Waiting for the reunion with his father, Gio Zarfino talks to him “daily by video call” and remembers him in his skin. “He has the same ‘fuskita’ (Volkswagen Beetle) tattooed with which he took him to all the games as a boy. But even with the plate number (registration) and everything, eh!” Says the father, laughing. On one of his legs he also carries another whom he never forgets, his uncle Chiqui, brother of Daniel’s mother. “He also always accompanied us in the ‘fuskita'”, says Daniel before opening the second shift of his hairdresser. The same one that does not rule out closing definitively if an opportunity arises to move the business to Gijón. “It is the idea, maybe it can be done”, he concludes.