FROM the moment he was born, Radamel Falcao was destined to be a footballer. Named after the Brazilian great who lit up the 1982 World Cup, and son of a former player, Falcao was plunged into a world immersed in the beautiful game.
His early years were spent being dragged around Colombia and Venezuela as his father, Radamel Garcia, fanned the dying embers of his own playing career. From the sidelines young Falcao was ever present; observing, copying, learning.
Radamel’s influence was fundamental. A defender himself, he coached Falcao in the ways of his nemesis, the striker, while steering his son through his formative years on a regime of dedication, sacrifice and professionalism.
Radamel took charge of his son’s career and even fixed up Falcao’s first professional contract – worth £50 a week – before his debut appearance in the Colombian second division as a 13-year-old – a ‘youngest player’ record that still stands.
Falcao went on to become one of the world’s most prolific strikers, a man now tasked with helping Manchester United reassert themselves as one of the top teams in Europe.
Fifteen years on from his debut, he has reached the top. Louis van Gaal’s deadline-day swoop coaxed him from Monaco to the physical, fast-paced Premier League. It is Falcao’s biggest test, but sitting in a newly opened bar in the north of the Colombian capital Bogota, owner Radamel reveals an added incentive for his son to be a success at Old Trafford.
‘I’m proud of my English blood,’ Radamel says extending his arm and patting down on his veins as he sits finishing lunch in La Cueva del Tigre (The Tiger’s Cave) bar. ‘My grandfather was English and also a sportsman.’
Daniel, his business partner, smirks, clearly amused by the comment. It is easy to see why. Like his son, Radamel was born in Santa Marta, the same Caribbean city as iconic Colombian midfielder Carlos Valderrama. He has hardened mestizo skin and peppers his conversation with expressions used only by people from the northern coast.
After stumbling over a few English words he gives up and launches into the story of how a young man from Yorkshire came to Colombia in the inter-war period, fell in love with a local girl and had five children. One of those, Denis, is Falcao’s grandma.
A few decades later, this English family link led Radamel to visit the British embassy to request a passport for his teenage son who was about to sign for River Plate.
‘He was probably about 13 so I went down to the embassy thinking that a British passport would help him with a move to Europe. Unfortunately it got rejected,’ says Radamel.
Great-grandfather, George King, was one branch too far up the Garcia family tree for Falcao to be given British citizenship. And so disappeared the opportunity of Falcao ever playing for England.
In 1932 in the small North Yorkshire village of Burn, a few miles south of Selby, a man in his mid-twenties and his pregnant wife packed their bags for a new life in South America.
George had accepted a post as an accountant in northern Colombia. For a young couple who had grown up through the horrors of the First World War and the economic uncertainties of the 1920s it was the chance of a new start far away from a Europe groaning under the strain of the Great Depression.
Shortly after George arrived in Colombia, tragedy struck when his wife died during childbirth. With Europe again drifting towards war, George chose to stay and devote his energies to his work.
Employed by a subsidiary of the American-owned United Fruit Company, George was an important man, but his employers were involved in one of Colombia’s biggest scandals of the era. At the end of 1928, four years before the Yorkshireman arrived, striking workers at the banana plantation where George was to work marched in protest against their slave-like working conditions.
Under pressure from the UFC, the government sent in the army. It was a Sunday and as protesters mixed with churchgoers, troops blocked exit points from the main square and opened fire. Nobody knows how many died, but some estimates claim up to 2,000.
After George was widowed he fell for a Colombian girl, Juliana, with whom he had five children; Jack, Roy, Carlos, Telma and Denis – Falcao’s grandma.
‘They gave him the money to sort out, but as he was leaving he was murdered by people who stole the money,’ recalls Denis. It was a tragic end to the Yorkshireman’s 28 years in South America.
