Big legacy

Juan Calero arrived at the newspaper and was quickly filled with emotion. He was able to see images from the archive that are treasured by him and his family: Miguel Calero, his father, as a star of Pachuca and a world-renowned figure.

"You know? That's the most beautiful thing about all this: wherever I go, memories of my father, of his legacy, come back. He's not here physically today, but his memory lives on," says Juan José, who is currently the current top scorer in the Liga de Expansión.

Venados FC's star forward, Juan José Calero Sierra (November 5, 1998, Valle del Cauca, Colombia), is making history. He's doing it with goals, and now, in the 2025 Apertura, he has a dozen goals in eight matches, scoring an average of one every 63.9 minutes, a figure that's overwhelming in its consistency. Impressive.

But, inside, even though he has the spotlight on him for his voracity in front of the goal, he considers himself part of a team in which, he says, "everyone is valuable."

And that's where what his father instilled in him before he passed away comes in: "Play and enjoy." And among those, "Contribute everything you can on the court, work for the team."

Certainly, the striker who scores goals is the one everyone looks up to, "but I'd be nothing without the team. I've scored some where, apparently, my teammates let me score the goals. The goalkeeper, most of the time, is judged easily: one mistake he makes and everyone talks about it. The striker has one mistake and he misses it, but he has others and others. That's football."

He values, as it could not be otherwise, his father's career in soccer, especially because he came to Mexico as a nobody, "and here he made a name for himself, worked hard, earned his place. And today everyone remembers him. And look, he retired and decided that we should stay in Mexico. Then he died, and my mother also decided that we should stay. We love Mexico very much. We're happy for what it's given us."

He's certainly living it. "Football has allowed me to grow, develop, and dream. And doing this job is beautiful, but if you want to grow, you have to work hard."

“He always told us to play. He instilled in us the love of football, not that we should be striving for a position, like goalkeeper. Of course, in the beginning, you see your father and you want to be like him. He bought me my gloves, my goalkeeper uniforms, I enjoyed it, I was happy. But he never told me: 'You have to be a goalkeeper.' In fact, he told us: 'If you don't want to play football, don't play football, but whatever you're going to be, be happy.' We played basketball once, but I still thought about studying journalism… But I decided to stick with football, and here we are, out of joy, vocation, and happiness.”

He admired his father and all the goalkeepers because, he notes, "it's the most difficult position, the most demanding. That's why when we talk about me being the top scorer, I look at our goalkeepers. Now I've tried to establish a good friendship with the Venados players."

In fact, on Saturday Juan Calero scored a hat trick to help the Venados make a big comeback against the Zacatecas Miners, but a great save by goalkeeper Arturo Delgado on the final play prevented what could have been a sad 4-4 draw.

“That's what I'm saying,” he insists. “They don't see the goalkeeper. If he makes a mistake, they criticize him. The striker makes mistakes and fails, sometimes he goes games without scoring, and they don't get criticized as much from the stands as the goalkeeper.”

And, after discussing the strikers' mistakes, the conversation went to other extremes. He cited Santiago Giménez, currently a striker for AC Milan in the Italian League, as an example. "He's the best striker we have in that position in Mexico. But sometimes they only mention when he doesn't score. Watching the games, you see that he performs many functions, which go beyond just scoring goals. And another thing: he's playing for Milan, in one of the best leagues in the world. To be there, you have to have something special. And no, it's not just goals."

We touched on the topic of Guillermo Ochoa, who continues to expand his career and is now playing for AEL Limassol. In his debut match, his team was thrashed 5-0. “He has a great track record and has the right to decide where and with whom to play, to maintain his dream of being in the World Cup again. Who are we to deny him that dream? I think Memo could be an important figure in the locker room, maybe not as a starter, but certainly having him on the Mexican team, given his experience. Besides, the World Cup will be played in Mexico. That's a great thing for everyone.”

Juan Calero wants to make his mark, and he's doing just that with the Venados. "I feel very happy with the team, in the city. I think we'll gradually move forward. It's true we're off to a slow start, but we're getting there."

The Venados are in 12th place in the table with eight points. “It's not what we planned, it's not what we want, but the project has been talked about well, and we're happy with 'El Profe' (Nacho Castro, the coach). It's just that we've had some unlucky matches, but we're scoring goals, and that's important. Against Cancún, we could have done better; we were the leaders; against Mineros, we had a good first half and came back twice to win. This upcoming match will be key: we're going to fight to get the win against Correcaminos, and if you look closely, we're three points away from moving up to fifth place.” The table says so: the Venados, in 12th place with eight, could slip into fifth place. There are five teams with eleven points, from fifth to tenth.

Is a comeback possible for the Venados?

“We're moving up. And if we continue like this, we can go even further.”—Gaspar Silveira Malaver