It was the laces that first caught the eye of the Swindon Town players.
Nestor Lorenzo didn’t do his boots up like anyone else.
“He used to wrap them underneath, then up and around his ankles, rather than tying them on top of his boots,” recalls Paul Bodin, the former Swindon defender and Wales international. “We were like, ‘Bloody hell’. It was unconventional and something that vividly stood out to all of us.”
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Forget the boots for a moment. That Lorenzo was in the same dressing room as Bodin and his Swindon Town team-mates seems extraordinary.
In July 1990, he played the full game in the World Cup final for Argentina, alongside Diego Maradona, against West Germany.
Four months later, Lorenzo was lining up for Swindon in a back four with Bodin, Adi Viveash and Tom Jones, in front of 8,621 people at the County Ground, and just across the road from the town’s infamous “magic roundabout” — five mini-roundabouts arranged in a circle and an accident waiting to happen.
Swindon were 17th in English football’s second tier at the time and had gone eight games without a win.
Lorenzo was 24 and, on the face of it, at his peak. He had represented Argentina at the 1988 Olympic Games, spent the previous season playing for Bari in Serie A, and his last competitive match before running out for Swindon was that World Cup final at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, where West Germany won an ill-tempered game 1-0 in front of more than a billion people watching on TV.
HTV West news, the regional television show that screened highlights of Lorenzo’s Swindon debut against Portsmouth, attracted a more niche audience in November 1990. A pillar in the ramshackle Shrivenham Road stand at the County Ground restricted the cameraman’s view but didn’t prevent him from capturing Lorenzo’s powerful header that opened the scoring in a 3-0 win.
Lorenzo’s first game for Swindon couldn’t have gone any better and his loan deal from Bari was eventually made permanent for an initial fee of around £160,000 (around $270,000 at the time).
“Unbelievable,” Bodin says, laughing. “It would just never happen now, would it?”
Lorenzo’s time at Swindon provides a fun and fascinating chapter to the backstory of the manager of one of the best international teams in the world right now.
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Colombia are unbeaten in 26 games across the past two years and Lorenzo has been in charge for 23 of them, wearing his favourite (black) suit and (red) shirt combination in the dugout and holding a tactics board that features the Virgin of Lujan, the patron saint of Argentina, on one side and, presumably, James Rodriguez at No 10 somewhere on the other. Lorenzo looks to both for hope and inspiration.
GO DEEPER
Why are so many of the coaches at Copa America from Argentina?
“I don’t have many superstitions, maybe one or two, but I believe a lot in God and I ask him to enlighten me to make wise decisions,” the 58-year-old said a little while ago.
It’s easy to imagine that Lorenzo’s time at Swindon, where he spent a couple of seasons, has largely been forgotten — the memories diluted by the passage of time and the reality that it was hardly a career highlight for someone who played with Maradona, Juan Roman Riquelme and Javier Zanetti, as well as in a World Cup final — but nothing could be further from the truth.
In the bowels of the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on Tuesday night, after Colombia had drawn 1-1 with Brazil to finish top of their group and secure a place in the Copa America quarter-finals against Panama on Saturday, Lorenzo’s face lit up when Swindon Town were mentioned.
“You were at Swindon?!” Lorenzo said, smiling.
It turns out Lorenzo has been back to Swindon to see the club and also to visit the town where his daughter was born.
Does he remember Bodin? “Of course I do!” the Colombia manager replied, looking almost surprised that the question even needed to be asked.
It’s a surreal conversation in so many ways, not least because only a few minutes earlier Lorenzo had been answering questions about whether Vinicius Junior should have been awarded a penalty for Brazil and how James Rodriguez is coping with playing for Colombia every few days.
Now, surrounded by South American journalists who want to congratulate him on another excellent result, Lorenzo is talking about a Welsh left-back who set up a goal for him in a 2-2 draw at Vicarage Road 34 years ago and asking where Nicky Hammond, Swindon Town’s second-choice goalkeeper in 1990, is working these days (Leeds United, for those of you who are wondering). Micky Hazard, a cultured midfielder who later became a black-cab driver in London, gets a mention too.
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It certainly doesn’t take long in Lorenzo’s company to realise why his former Swindon team-mates talk so fondly of him, even if they don’t miss coming up against him in training.
“Hard as nails!” Hammond says, laughing. “But what a top guy.”
So how did one of football’s most curious transfers happen?
Back in 1990, Swindon were managed by Ossie Ardiles, who had been a World Cup winner with Argentina in 1978, and that goes some way to explaining why Lorenzo ended up in Wiltshire. But only some way, because Lorenzo had actually planned to sign for another English club after the World Cup finals.
“When I left Italy for England I went to Nottingham Forest,” Lorenzo told The Loathed Strangers, a Swindon Town fan podcast, in a fascinating interview in 2019. “As soon as I arrived in Nottingham, the manager, (Brian) Clough, took me into his office and said, ‘Look, I want you. But I have to sell a player to buy you.’
“I was disappointed because I believed it was already done.”
🚨COMING SOON🚨
NÉSTOR LORENZO
A general conversation (moreso than usual) covering Argentinos Juniors, Serie A, The World Cup Final, Boca Juniors, Maradona, Messi, England and a debut goal vs. Portsmouth in 1990.
Available from September!
🇦🇷 #LSPOD #STFC 🇦🇷 pic.twitter.com/Vpcvlzk5gr
— The Loathed Strangers (@LoathedStranger) August 26, 2019
Lorenzo needed to find another club at short notice. Back in Italy, there had been offers on the table from Paris Saint-Germain and Valencia, but those doors were now closed.
He had an opportunity to return to Argentina, where he started his career with Argentinos Juniors, coming through the club’s youth ranks in the late 1970s at a time when Maradona was playing for the first team, but going home didn’t appeal to him in his mid-twenties.
“I wanted to play in England, even if it was in the second division — and it was the right decision,” Lorenzo said. “I enjoyed it a lot at Swindon. It was a very good time of my life.”
Hammond can still picture the day Lorenzo stepped through the doors at the County Ground. “We heard he was coming, you knew he’d played in the World Cup final, and obviously the connection was Ardiles — that’s the only reason Nestor was in the building,” Hammond, who joined Leeds as a football advisor last summer, tells The Athletic.
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“And I have one absolute recollection from that time — Nestor walked in and he looked like a Spartan warrior. He had this jet black curly hair, a bit of a Roman nose and was as tough as old boots.”
Lorenzo played 27 games for Swindon across two seasons, scored two goals and left an indelible mark on his team-mates with the way that he tied his laces, his signature move when anyone tried to close him down, and most of all his tackling.
“Nestor was a top pro but very uncompromising,” Bodin says, chuckling. “He was a tough, no-nonsense central defender. He stood very square to attackers and didn’t allow anyone to go by him, legally or illegally! Literally, you couldn’t get past him because he’d almost wrestle you to the ground. It did cause a few ruffles in training!
“But as well as being a strong, powerful defender, it was natural for him to be brave in possession — because he was a top international player. I remember he liked a drag-back. He did that a lot. Lots of little touches on top of the ball to pull it away from people.”
Hammond smiles as he listens to Bodin’s description. “Nestor was ‘the rash’ — on top of everything. Aggressive — win the ball, if not take the man.
“So you saw that style of play, and you looked at him (his physical presence), but underneath it — and this is something you’ve just registered (at the Copa America) — there was this really beautiful guy.”
There would almost certainly have been more appearances for Swindon but Ardiles left to take the Newcastle job in March 1991 and Lorenzo never saw eye-to-eye with his compatriot’s successor, future England boss Glenn Hoddle, who took over as player-manager.
“It wasn’t easy to have a manager and a player on the field,” Lorenzo said. “Not easy because Glenn had a personality, and myself as well, and then sometimes we argued with each other. I think that was the reason he put me out (the team). But it’s OK. I met Glenn with the Colombia national team (in London), and we gave each other a big hug.”
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At that time, Lorenzo was Colombia’s assistant coach — a role he held for seven years before becoming a manager, initially at club level in Peru with Melgar and then in 2022 with Colombia, where his record is remarkable. Colombia have beaten Brazil, Germany and Spain during Lorenzo’s reign and are now only 90 minutes from a Copa America semi-final.
Not bad for a former Swindon Town centre-half.
“It’s fantastic,” Hammond says. “Because it really couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.”
