Since his landing in Peñarol and his debut in the National League at the age of 15, he offered signs that his talent was something serious. He emigrated to Spain at 19, because Barcelona B wanted him to be part of his training team. And since then he leaves pearls on every court. He is infinitely resourceful, he is roguish and his cradle training makes a difference. In the LEB Oro Leaguethe Spanish second division, Juani Marcos He pulled out of the hat a solution to score two points and the expression of the local reporter allows us to understand what kind of player we are talking about: “There you can see that he is Argentine”.
The cameras stayed with him for an action that is not new in his repertoire. Even, he had already aroused some surprise when he took advantage of the rival’s distraction to score two points. On this occasion, with the shirt of Força Lleidafor the LEB Gold League, Marcos was in charge of taking the ball from the back of the field with his team in attack and as he noticed that he did not have a clear pass and that his defender had his back to him, he chose to bounce the ball off his rival , take advantage of that play and defined without opposition under the hoop.
The action surprised the reporters, who, seeing what the 21-year-old Argentine point guard did, said: “Be careful! The play of rogue, of murri (“alive”)… From Juani Marcos, it shows that he is Argentine. There he is noticed ”. A perfect mix between talent and lucidity to take advantage of all the resources at hand. And the truth is that this boy who was born in Rosario, who lived in Chaco and Misiones, to follow the career of his father Mariano -former player and coach of the Under 17 women’s team-, breathes basketball.
It is not the only time he did it, because two years before he had appealed to the same resource, but playing for Barcelona B, for the LEB Plata League and there everyone began to understand why the Catalan entity opted for him. Even that first time he took advantage of an opponent’s distraction, he converted and earned an extra shot because he was fouled.
Basketball is in his DNA, his father Mariano Marcos has been a coach for more than 20 years and his mother Mariana Chuda is a coach and former player. He arrived in Peñarol in 2016, from El Coatí de Eldorado, Misiones. After four seasons in the Mar del Plata team and an excellent performance in the U19 World Cup in Greece, Juani made the leap to Europe.
The debut in Lleida
He flew to Spain to join Barcelona B and lead a young squad in the promotion to LEB Oro, after two seasons full of learning. Things were not easy for him, because after that experience, he had problems with his papers to obtain a community passport: he spent seven months without being able to compete. “It’s very complicated, because you know that no matter how much you do, nothing depends on you… At first it was planned that the papers would be ready for October, but in Argentina there was a two-month delay on the scheduled date and from there they went to Italy where there was a new delay… It’s to drive you crazy because you don’t even know what to do, but a day comes when they tell you that everything is ready, that you can finally travel to Italy, sign, authorize the papers and forget everything “, Marcos told the official website of the LEB Gold League.
Barcelona B decided not to participate in the second division, which is why the transfer to Força Lleida. Juani is designed for this game, because since he was born it has been like this: “The whole family continues in sports: mom is a secretary at a hospital but also runs her own basketball school for boys and girls in El Dorado, dad works in a Misiones club and coordinates the women’s training teams, while my two sisters also practice sports, in addition to their studies,” Juani said in a chat with the CAB page.
And he added: “I played in Rosario until I was 6 years old, in Náutico and Libertad, then we went to Chaco where I met professional basketball since the Primera de Española played the ex-TNA, and from there we moved to Misiones, when he began to my dad direct me,” Marcos said.
His projection speaks of a chance, in the future in the Barcelona first team, even before starting the season in Lleida he made a preseason with them. His closest objective is the national team, although he knows that it is not an easy task in a position where there are names like Facundo Campazzo, Nicolás Laprovittola and Luca Vildoza. However, a clear chance appears on the horizon, which is the Americup (it will be held in September in Brazil), in which perhaps, due to calendar issues, NBA players cannot participate and have them participate in the Euroleague.
Juani Marcos is a talent in full expansion, much more than a “simple Creole liveliness”.
