Igor Lichnovsky is with the Chilean team in the United States, preparing the debut against Peru in the Copa América. However, the defender’s football history could also have taken an alternative path, with him contesting the Euro 2024.
It happens that the Chilean, behind his unknown last name, hides a powerful story that links him to one of the great surprises: Slovakia, executioner of Belgium in the debut, and country where his family’s history began.
“My father was practically a year old, in the middle of the war you couldn’t go to a hospital, you couldn’t go anywhere, he shouldn’t have survived that.” and it practically comes out – my mother tells me – in a shoe box with my grandfather,” the América defender told Mediotiempo in 2017.
“And they come to Chile, hence the ancestry I have from the former Czechoslovakia, because of my surname that today would be Slovak, but I am more Chilean than the beans,” he added about that bond, which did not reach greater depth in the football part. , but it did shape his character.
Trained in the Universidad de Chile youth academy and transferred to Porto before the age of 20., the defender found in Mexico the right place to exploit his best conditions. There he became known in Necaxa, he served in Cruz Azul and Tigres, before becoming a key player in América, the most popular club in Liga MX.
“I think that leadership, as they call it, was built on the basis of my life story. My grandfather, who was Czechoslovak, although until his death he said that he was only Slovak, fought in both world wars,” Igor told Las Últimas Noticias today. “We had important shortcomings and I believe that all of that, in the long run, changed my personality.”.
