by Sebastian Arana
Mariano Garcia Galli overwhelmed with his enthusiasm. With the years the DT of the challenges It hasn’t lost a bit of its energy. Since that first foray into Eleven Unidos in 1993, he has specialized in a very difficult subject: building basketball clubs almost from scratch. Alvarado, his new place for almost a year, is one of those virgin lands in which he moves like a fish in water. In which almost everything is to be done.
After the novelty of the appearance of basketball in 2019, the pandemic dealt a heavy blow to Jara and Rodríguez Peña’s club. García Galli had some points of support, but also a lot of work ahead. Today he has some achievements to show: the work carried out last year in the Schools allows the club to aspire to present a team in all WBA categories and its personal convening power will make it possible to put two teams in the first division and compete again in the Prefederal, one of the great objectives.
“We want to do things seriously. With Daniel Ferrero, José Luis Belfiore, Guillermo Gutiérrez, Polo Labatut, Flavio Plaquín, Rino Gobbo and Roberto Amoruso we put together a good Basketball Commission, which is very important. And this year we had a very important addition to our coaching staff: John Izarra, who almost came with me when he was about to do the Catholic Youth thing and then he had gone to the United States, and now will direct U19 and the First Development“Garcia Galli maintained.
The idea of the First Development discovers a passionate. “I did a project to create a U23 category, nobody took my note. My idea is that boys don’t stop playing after they turn eighteen, Mar del Plata’s basketball has suffered from this bleeding for a long time. I am convinced that not all players explode before the age of 18. They can do it at 19, 20 or 21. There are countless cases. In that category, a kid who maybe didn’t play very well at 18 can improve a lot at 20 and basketball wouldn’t lose him,” he explained.
Alvarado will put up another top team with U23 players. “We don’t want to lose those guys,” he said.
“As they didn’t give me a ball -he continued-, we at the club are going to do the same. We will present a second first team made up of players under 23 years old and it will not be called Alvarado B, but Alvarado DD (Developmental). This way I make sure that the youth can continue until they are 22 or 23 years old and have their place in that first-class team. We want to contain the boys inside Alvarado.”
“We are going to try to maintain that Development First over time. Many boys are joining who stopped being youth in their clubs and see that they have no place in their first teams. In addition, the Prefederal regulations allow fifteen seniors and ten juniors on the list. So in the list of the Prefederal they are going to have small places from the Primera de Desarrollo. If you allow us, Daniel Ferrero’s idea is that this Development Division plays after U15 and U17”, he was enthusiastic.
Every time García Galli went to a club, he tried to put together a strong first-class team that would function as a mirror for the other divisions. 2022 will have important challenges for the former. “Our participation in the Prefederal is confirmed with the base of the team from the previous year and with some reinforcements. Players who were not protagonists of their teams before coming to Alvarado ended up being here and we ended up playing moderately well. We have a base”, he was excited.
Building the training, however, is the most difficult. “It was a great goal what Manu Gutiérrez and Mariano Labatut did, who are Eneba 1 and are doing Eneba 2, at the Escuelita de mini. They ended the year with 26 or 27 guys. This year we will face mini-basketball with that amount, plus what is added from the Vacation Camp where Mariano also works”, he stated.
“There are already four or five U13s and we are excited to be able to present that category. U15 and U17 it is very likely that we will also have thanks to the work that Marcos Barg did in the School from 14 to 18 years old, where he had more than twenty boys. There he took several players for those two categories. This way we would complete the strip with less than a year of work, which would be spectacular. These teams will participate in the Stimulus Zone for at least one year. But with the aim of playing Championship Zone as soon as possible. If a coach wants to try it, he is welcome”, he was enthusiastic.
A new discipline within a club has to earn its times and places. “We start with limited hours. Keep in mind that we started working with the first one last March 24 with many activities started. We had to adapt to the short schedule that there was and we managed well. But we have grown and this year we have a noticeable improvement. We have a gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday and also Saturday morning. We made a lot of progress,” he said.
Alvarado’s headquarters escapes that central nucleus where the vast majority of the clubs of the Mar del Plata Association are concentrated. A basketball club is a novelty in the Jara neighborhood and Rodríguez Peña y García Galli plans to take advantage of that advantage. “We did a job with the schools and we are going to resume it in mid-February. This is a football club, but there are a lot of boys in this neighborhood. And not everyone plays soccer. We want to be the second discipline of a very big club“, said the DT.
story of a fighter
Eleven Unidos, Telephones, New Sport, again Telephones, Independent after the collapse of his historic gym…García Galli was a nomad who never shied away from titanic tasks. “It is not difficult for me because I am passionate about what I do. Beyond the eight years that I was in Eleven Unidos, I never got to belong to a club. That’s where it’s the great pending account of my career. It is what touched me. My temperament, my way of being, at some point has betrayed me. But there is Eleven Unidos, there is Telephones, at the time we were able to stand up Independiente…”, he detailed.
The task to be undertaken in Alvarado is similar to the previous ones. But the popularity of the club makes it different from all. “I found myself with a fucking club and neighborhood, with a lot of support from the Board of Directors of a club that is all about football. We spoke with Daniel Ferrero the other day. You know what I want? Get the leaders to also become basketball fans. That is achieved with a number of boys and with results. We have full support, but I want one more step: make them basketball fans. It depends on what the support group and the coaches do and on whether we fill this club with boys, which is getting prettier every day”, stated García Galli.
“I want to make the leaders of Alvarado basketball fans,” García Galli proposes.
The “Cabezón” does not mind being hung with the label of the DT of the emerging clubs. “The day I make a balance, it will never give me a negative. I went to Once Unidos in 1993 when it only had the court and a basketball school owned by Maestro Cuellar, who had directed me and my old man. A father went to look for me to teach basketball because he knew me from having directed his daughter in the women’s team of Independiente. And I stayed nine years. I started with 20 kids and ended with 200 and all the categories formed, plus the youth champions from Buenos Aires and the first runner-up of the Official behind the great Atlético Mar del Plata from Michalopulos and Fortete. I had to leave because of a very strong fight with the president at that time”, he recalled his great time at the Parque Luro club.
“I went to Telephones motivated by Ruso Muñoz who took me four balls from the Sprite promotion and I brought together all my former fellow players to put together the first one. All over thirty years old: the Martínez brothers, Pantera Sosa, Juancho Valentini, Javier Polich and Sergio Verfaillie, Tata Collar and Israel Bastarrica joined them. And we also set up the Little Basketball School. At the end of the year, the usual story, they started with that basketball loses and I went to New Sport. There, in 2001, we won four championships because Preparation, Official and Anniversary were played; I directed children, Sub 22 and first. My temper betrayed me again because I was reproached for having lost the third game of the Official’s first-class final against Quilmes at Once Unidos. Mariano Gagey, Junior Cequeira, Mariano Pennisi played for them and they dropped to some of the League. We lost the series 2-1 and some reproach was made to me. I sent them to hell and I spent a year without working, “he said and, incidentally, recognized his explosive character.
“El Negro Echevarría, with whom I had little relationship, went to look for me in 2003 to go to Kimberley. I ended up becoming a very good friend of his, I love him very much. ‘Look Osvaldo, you and I are difficult,’ I warned him. And he told me: ‘That’s why kid, those from the first local can’t stand me anymore, take charge.’ We came out champions of the First Official after eleven years, we were champions of Sub 22 and runners-up of Peñarol in juveniles only because they took us to Mata and Bonfiglio. I had to leave because I had problems with a manager because he didn’t like that I didn’t put the son first, despite the fact that Emilio Van Gool didn’t want to know anything about my leaving. Tomorrow they will count the clubs that I put up“, completed the tour.
García Galli and the boys from the club cafe. “Here I receive enormous affection from people who are not from the club.”
García Galli went from one club to another. But this “gypsy” of Mar del Plata basketball wants to put down stronger roots. “I’m older, the truth is that I would like to retire in Alvarado. I am very comfortable here and I receive enormous affection from people who are not from the club and who made me feel very good from day one”, he was excited. Time will tell if he fulfills that wish. What is certain is that from his enthusiasm, boys will appear who will bite an orange ball and hang a hoop to shoot in a neighborhood that is pure football.
Practice schedules
García Galli, coordinator of the entire activity, and the leaders defined the hours of the activity. This is the detail:
Basketball School: Monday and Wednesday, from 18 to 19, and Saturdays from 10; Minibasketball and U13: Monday and Wednesday, from 7 pm to 8 pm, and Saturday at 11 am; U15 and U17: Wednesday and Friday, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; U19 and U23: Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 8:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.: First: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 8:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Both schools are open to boys and girls. The coaches are Manuel Gutiérrez, Mariano Labatut, Marcos Barg, Juan Izarra and Mariano García Galli himself. Those interested in attending can call 472-1611.
