This Sunday a Fabian O’Neill died, a different player, but really different. With an innate ability to play ball and the impudence and ability to enjoy the game that the paddock usually teaches. At the age of 49, the native of Paso de Los Toros left the world early, just as he did from soccer.
In Durazno he took his first steps in Defensor, a team he was with until the early 90’s when he moved to Montevideo to join the fifth division of Nacional. It was difficult for him to adapt and he missed his family and the tranquility of the interior of the country, but he responded with soccer and became champion of the fourth division.
He quickly made his debut in the First Division, in April 1992 he played the first of his more than 130 games with Nacional, where he emerged champion four times and scored 34 goals.
His facility for dribbling and vision of the game catapulted him to Cagliari, where he spent five consecutive seasons to become a Sardinian idol. He openly got tired of driving the tough Italian defenders crazy, who had to suffer him on countless occasions.
His great performances made Juventus take an interest in him and that is how he would move to Turin to continue his career. There, a certain Zinedine Zidane, who already knew the weight of the World Cup, said that O’Neill was the best footballer he could play with.
It did not go well for him at the “Vecchia Signora” and he went on loan to Perugia for six months and then another months at Cagliari. It was there that his time in Italy ended and he returned to Nacional.
In 2003, after a handful of games under the leadership of Daniel Carreño, he abandoned soccer. He was not yet 30 years old when he prematurely decided to end a career that pointed to much more.
In the “Celeste” he had a brief step: he debuted in 1993 and played 19 games. He saw action in the World Cup Qualifiers in France 1998 and Korea Japan in 2002, where he joined the squad despite not seeing action.
«He had it all, money, fame and women. His ability on the court led him to play for Nacional, Cagliari, Perugia and Juventus in Italy. He was praised by Zinedine Zidane and was part of the controversial 2002 World Cup team. He lived close to addictions and far from professional conduct. When he retired from football, at less than 30 years of age, he left among the fans the bitter feeling that he could have gone further, being the elite player that he did not become », reads his biography“ Until the last gout “.
After his retirement, the ghosts of addictions became more evident than ever and consumed him little by little. That was how he went from having a financially settled life to losing everything.
“When I played football I had 14 million dollars in the bank and I spent it on women and alcohol, but I also filled the table with food for people who didn’t need it. Today I am poor, I come across people I helped and they don’t even say hello to me,” O’Neill once said.
“It doesn’t bother me to be poor. I had a lot of money and I had millions of friends, today I only have 10 or 12, bohemians like me, but they are the ones who help me. We accommodate each other,” he added.
For years he struggled with alcoholism, managed to beat it for a time, and relapsed for the same time. Finally, this Sunday early as his ability to foresee the plays and sudden as his dribbling, he left the earthly plane.
