Diego Neira revealed how the ‘payola’ ended his football career

The content creator Diego Neira he gave up his dream of being a professional footballer before becoming the digital celebrity he is today.

Although the ultimate goal for every Colombian player is to make his debut in the first or second division with a Dimayor club, Neira was aware that this path involved achieving unethical maneuvers for him and his family and ended his career in the Colombian sports industry.

Neira was part of the Under-17 and Under-20 squad Tigers FC of Bogotá and revealed in the program Hello Colombia from Canal RCN that his hopes of reaching the first team were dashed when he began to notice that there were people without too much talent who had not gone through the same process as him, integrating the said crew.

In other words, the player found himself in the business of paying to play or to appear, which is commonly referred to as pay in the music industry and which comes from English pay to play, or pay to cast. In his case, he noticed that his technical and physical conditions were not sufficient to integrate the Tigers team and this gradually demotivated him until he decided not to continue.

Nera too streamer from the Twitch platform he saw how many of his teammates, but not from the cycle, were taking place in the Bogotá team and it began to generate too much suspicion for him. Here is how he recounted his experience at the Buen Día Colombia program:

Before, he wanted to be a professional footballer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t achieved at the time…because of a lot of things, right? I first started looking for teams that would help me achieve the goal of being a professional. I went through Iguarán, Selección Bogotá, Selección Meta, Independiente Meta and Tigres FC.

From the age of eight he started playing football in his neighborhood and at the age of 14 he became determined to turn his talent into discipline and made it clear that he was delighted to formalize his job while at Tigres FC, a professional team. in the Colombian second division:

When I got to Tigres I was excited, although they had already told me there was a lot of wire. People from other regions, as a manager, money at stake… I found myself with a very different reality: with a call, with something where merit prevailed. It was like a weird shock because first I believed in football, I believed in the process

Diego acknowledged that in his first steps as a Tigers player, the team rewarded those who really had the merit of serving as starters, those who worked the hardest and of course the most talented, but that later the situation had a lot changed:

I started noticing people who had no talent or weren’t going through the process and weren’t in the under 15, under 17 or under 20 processes, but were reaching the professional category . One is that they have arrived and have simply already played. They came with businessmen, with managers and that lowered the bill quite a bit. Obviously we said to ourselves “it’s weird, there must be money at stake”. On some occasions yes and on others it was the bagel, in the sense of “ahh, he’s my friend, play it for me” or “come on, do me a little favor and start me Chinese who wants to play”

Although the footballer tried to do so legitimately without a bribe, he one day decided to blame the situation on his superiors at the club and told them about the problem thus:

I was like “hey what’s going on. I’m playing better”. They took one off topic and said “no you’re doing badly” and that was just a story …

Neira confirmed that the pay He exists in the world of football in his own way and this desperation and frustration tried to take hold of him, to the point that his parents thought of contributing financially to his career, but he refused as it seemed contrary to the ethics :

I told them it was unethical, that I didn’t want to, and even though I had the financial resources to do it, it wasn’t how I wanted it. Anyone who has played football or has a family member or something knows what the experience is like. I would say that few wanted to acknowledge it publicly. Similarly, when you’re in the process, you don’t say anything precisely because you don’t want to be fired, but there comes a time when the sadness or disappointment is so great that you can’t take it anymore.

The content builder talked about an experience he had with a tech named chachanthat he was with him at Tigres and that he favored the rosca of the players, in addition to the fact that he was repeatedly rude and arrogant with him, until they almost hit each other due to the differences that they had in training and that discussion was the trigger to decide not to play anymore.

After his failed attempt to play in the BetPlay Dimayor TournamentDiego has taken advantage of the covid-19 pandemic to exploit his talents of humor and generate a community on Twitch, Instagram and TikTok, in which he expresses his opinions and motivates his followers to achieve their dreams:

His other passion led him to represent the Colombian team in the world of Banners In the stadium Benito Villamarin Sevilla, Spain where he scored a goal against Mexico but unfortunately suffered a knee injury against the Spanish team.