Horror injury almost forced Reds’ record signing to quit
How £85m striker Nunez battled back to fitness as a teenager – and could have ended up at Brighton!
HE HAS become the most expensive signing in Liverpool’s history, but as a 17-year-old prodigy in Uruguay Darwin Nunez almost quit football after struggling with a serious knee injury.
As he pulls on a Liverpool shirt for the first time (below) he will spare a thought for former Penarol youth coach Jose Perdomo, who discovered him and convinced him to keep going.
Then there is former Uruguay Under 20 coach Fabian Coito, who kept picking him when others, including Nunez himself, had doubts.
And parents Silvia and Bibiano, who inspired his persistence. When he moved to Almeria, he bought them six hectares of land to build a new home.
‘I called him the other day and said, “You have forgotten about the old man!”,’ says Perdomo. The joke was met with a promise to send a signed shirt soon. Perdomo understands this is a busy time for Liverpool’s £85million signing.
It was nine years ago when he went to the town of Artigas on the Uruguay-Brazil border to scout Nunez in an Under 13s event.
When he told the family he wanted to take him to Montevideo, mum Silvia initially resisted. ‘Not Darwin too!’ she said, having already seen son Junior move to Penarol.
Nunez, now 22, struggled to cope with the transition at first. The move took him 400 miles south, at first living in shared digs with other hopefuls in the bustling capital.
Just when he finally began to adapt and advance to Penarol’s B team, he tore the cruciate ligament in his right knee. All progress ground to a halt and all the promise was cast into doubt.
In February 2017, he had surgery and so tough was the road to recovery that he nearly headed back home with his parents, who by now were with him in Montevideo.
Junior, an attacking midfielder, had given up his dream of playing professionally and would become a policeman. Darwin began to wonder whether his fate would be the same. He had originally expected to be back in six months, but it was closer to 18 months before he played regularly again.
Perdomo, who played for Uruguay at Italia 90 and briefly for Coventry that year, has been bringing young talents through at Penarol for 18 years.
Of the recovery from that injury in 2017, he says: ‘He had been promoted to the first team and wanted to prove himself, but he couldn’t because his knee hurt.’
It was November 2017 when he eventually made his first-team debut as a substitute. But he was playing through knee pain and self- doubt and soon relapsed, needing more surgery.
He wanted to go back to Artigas but was talked down.
‘I told him if he was dedicated he would make it,’ says Perdomo. ‘Along with his team-mates we convinced him. It’s to his huge credit that he kept going and also that when he left us he chose to move to a second tier team in Europe.’
That second division side was Almeria in Spain, where he scored 16 goals in 32 games and put himself on the watchlist of Europe’s directors of football.
Former Uruguay international Gus Poyet was soon urging his former club Brighton to sign him. Dan Ashworth was the club’s technical director at the time and tried to make it happen.
Luis Suarez had seen enough of his international team-mate to tell Barcelona to sign Nunez as his long-term replacement. The advice was not taken.
Nunez was happy in the south of Spain and bought his parents the land with the money he earned. ‘It’s a gift for everything you did for me,’ he said to them.
Neither Barcelona nor Brighton matched the money offered by Benfica, where Nunez moved next, enduring a difficult first season before getting his full wings in the second campaign.
By then he was an established international, a far cry from the days when his selection for the Under 20s was questioned.
It was Coito who chose Nunez for the South American Under 20 Championship at the start of 2019, even though he was still struggling post injury.
‘It was tough to get the injury out of his head. Injuries can be hard on a psychological level too,’ he says.
Coito persisted and a few months later, at the Under 20 World Cup in Poland, Nunez was one of the stars. But the now Liverpool striker never forgot the part his former coach played in sticking by him.
‘I went to coach the Honduras team and we played Uruguay, and he came looking for me in our dressing room,’ recalls Coito. ‘We shook hands and he gave me a hug.’
‘It could have been different. As the coach I could have blamed him, pointed the finger at him. But he had positive memories of it, despite not scoring the goals.’
How close does Coito believe Nunez came to quitting? ‘He never said it to me but I got the feeling that at one time it had crossed his mind,’ he says.
‘Uruguay is small but the capital can still seem a long way from home. Young players get frustrated and want to go home quickly, especially if they get a major setback like an injury.’
Fermin Mendez is a Uruguayan football writer for La Diaria who has followed Nunez’s rise and understands how he began to doubt himself.
‘In Penarol there was a real obligation to deliver,’ he says. ‘You don’t score goals and they might wait a couple of games for you but no more. The younger players can end up hostages to the expectations.’
His move to Almeria came at the same time he earned a call-up to the Uruguay senior team and he scored within five minutes of coming on against Peru in October 2019.
He dreamed of playing with Suarez and now he is his international team-mate and at the legend’s former club.
Does Coito believe there are any similarities? ‘ Suarez is more competitive,’ he says. ‘Darwin has a greater natural athleticism. He is quick and scores goals.’
Nunez will need to adapt at Liverpool, just as he did in Spain and in Portugal.
But the lessons learned when he was a teenager, far from home and with a fledgling career in the balance, will only help him do that.