As recognized by Nelson Pipino Cuevas himself, he would never have reached one of the biggest clubs in Argentina were it not for the angry character of his mother, as it sounds. The always respected Nidia Concepción, widow of Cuevas – popularly known as ‘Ña Tora’ – put her hand (and fear) and got a seven-year contract with the award-winning River Plate.
By Gonzalo Cáceres, journalist
Let’s review one of the most commented and well-known anecdotes of Paraguayan baseball folklore.
The thing starts in 1999.
After a period of training between Atlético Tembetary and Sport Colombia, Nelson Cuevas had the turning point in his sports career when he stood out with the Paraguayan team in the South American Championship in Mar del Plata that was played that year, a fact that the great protagonist of this story did not let go.
Ña Tora knew that Nelson had to make the jump, and faced him all or nothing.
This is how Pipino recalled it during a visit to the studios of Aire de Todos, on radio Montecarlo FM-Nación Media. “She leaves Mar del Plata (where the South American was played), she takes a bus, goes directly to the River field and waits five hours at the club. That day she introduced herself saying: ‘I am Nidia Concepción, widow of Cuevas, married with three children. I need to talk to the president, now!’”
The former striker said that the astonished officials of the Buenos Aires club tried to calm the woman, but there was no case. It was with a clear objective and she would not back down. Ña Tora ended up losing patience, she took the security ahead and broke into the office of then Vice President Alfredo Davicce.
“He entered and sang to him (to Davicce) ‘one warm night we met, next to the blue lake of Ypacaraí’. Imagine the courage she had to do that. Then she said ‘I’m here to buy my son now, but now’ ”.
The story, or the legend, tells that the pressured Davicce telephoned Ramón Díaz, the then technical director, and asked him about the qualities of the Paraguayan player. Always in Pipino’s version, in reality River had already been following him, his mother simply gave the ‘jog’ what was missing
Photo: TODAY edition.
“Mom makes the negotiation and got a seven-year contract”slipped in between laughs.
The rest of the tale is well known. Cuevas lived two successful cycles in the entity of Núñez. He scored 14 goals in a total of 103 matches played and won the Liga titles of the Apertura 1999, Clausura 2000, Clausura 2002, Clausura 2003, and a place in the heart of the fan’millionaire’.
Cuevas also performed well in the 2022 Korea-Japan World Cup. There he scored 2 goals in the 2 games he played. While in the 2006 World Cup in Germany he scored 1 goal in 2 sets. To date, he remains Paraguay’s all-time top scorer in World Cup events.
Photo: TODAY edition.
Ña Tora continued to influence her son’s career. He did not get a new extension with River, but he did make noise by trying to kick DT Aníbal ‘Maño’ Ruiz out of the Paraguayan team (obviously, for pretending that he would not take Nelson into account for the World Cup) and he won more than one cover when He threatened to go personally to China to look for his offspring, at a time of a very harsh flu epidemic that would have caused the “retention” of the footballer by the authorities.
“I owe a lot to my mom”settled Nelson.
Photo: TODAY edition.
With some maternal inspiration, Pipino’s record was as follows. River Plate, Inter Shanghai, Pachuca, America from Mexico, Libertad, Santos from Brazil, University of Chile, Olimpia, Albacete, Puebla, Cerro Porteño, Sportivo Luqueño and Sportivo Carapeguá.
