The celebrations in the home dressing room were decidedly low-key.
Liverpool had cruised to an emphatic 3-0 victory over Nottingham Forest at Anfield but minds were elsewhere.
Jurgen Klopp’s players knew that their triumph on the field paled into insignificance given what their team-mate Luis Diaz was going through.
As Liverpool closed to within three points of Premier League leaders Tottenham, the former Porto attacker was at home in Crosby, north of the city, anxiously awaiting news about his father Luis Manuel, who was kidnapped in the town of Barrancas in the region of La Guajira, the northernmost part of Colombia, on Saturday.
His mother Cilenis Marulanda had also been taken by gunmen on motorbikes, according to local reports and authorities, but she had been rescued unharmed, a development posted on the social media account of the country’s president, Gustavo Petro.
“The preparation was the most difficult I ever had in my life,” said Klopp, whose managerial career spans 22 years and more than 1,000 matches. “We all pray that everything will be fine. The only thing we could do is fight for our brother and that’s what they did.”
Diaz was at Liverpool’s Titanic Hotel with the rest of the squad late on Saturday night when he was told of his parents’ kidnapping. After speaking with Klopp, it was agreed that the 26-year-old would return home to be with his girlfriend Gera Ponce and their young daughter.
“We sent people with him, had people there to take care (of them),” Klopp explained. “There is part of his family there as well. It’s why they want to be together. It’s absolutely understandable.
“Then we got the news about his mum, which is absolutely fantastic. Since then, nothing really. They are working on it but it’s some distance.
“We are obviously not the first people that get informed but we try to get knowledge of everything, as much as we can, but we do not want to disturb in any way. We are not the important people there. We just want to support.”
After being rested for the visit of Toulouse in the Europa League on Thursday, Diaz had been selected to start on the left of Klopp’s front three against Steve Cooper’s side on Sunday.
His withdrawal from the squad led to Diogo Jota being drafted into the starting line up and after scoring the first goal against Forest he ran to the bench where he was given a Liverpool shirt with Diaz and No 7 on the back by reserve goalkeeper Adrian.
Jota holds up the shirt of Diaz (Daniel Chesterton/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
Jota held it aloft as players, staff and supporters applauded in support of the forward, who has scored 14 goals in 58 appearances since his £50million move from Porto in January 2022.
“It’s a very hard situation and I don’t know how anyone would react if it happened to you,” said an emotional Jota. “He was going to play. I played instead of him and I showed him his shirt to show we’re with him and we hope everything works out.
“It’s unimaginable to think a situation like this could happen. We can just support him and show him we’re with him.”
Jota lives close to Diaz in the town of Crosby, along with Adrian and striker Darwin Nunez, who recently moved there. Diaz, who is affectionately known as “Lucho”, is a popular figure in Klopp’s squad and the news hit everyone hard.
“How can you make a football game really important on a day like this? It’s really difficult,” said Klopp. “I never struggled with that in my life. It was always my safe place, sometimes my hiding point as a player or as a coach. You are allowed, during these 90-odd minutes, to focus just on that. But it was absolutely impossible to do that.
“It was clear we had to give the game an extra sense and it was fighting for Lucho. Then the boys pulled out the shirt and I was not 100 per cent prepared for that. It was really touching, but wonderful as well.”
The Kop chanted Diaz’s name repeatedly during the game and midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai summed it up best when he said: “None of us walks alone, Luis.”
The national police and the military in Colombia have been mobilised in search of his father. A reward of around 200million pesos ($48,000, £40,000) has been put forward for information that would aid the rescue mission and the capture of those responsible.
On Sunday, General William Salamanca, the head of the national police, spoke to Diaz by phone, telling him he was in La Guajira to personally lead the operation.
“Last night we managed to rescue your mother,” Salamanca told him in a call that was published on his social media account. “She is safe and sound. We are here using all the air and land capabilities of the police with the support of the Colombian army and we will be informing you, Lucho, but we want you to know that we are first in solidarity with you, accompanying you, and that we are sparing no effort because this has moved all of us Colombians.”
Asked if he had any questions, Diaz replied: “We have been communicating with family and I have no questions right now.”
Luis Fernando Velasco, the Colombian minister of the interior, has admitted there are fears that Luis Manuel could be taken across the border to neighbouring Venezuela.
“I ask all people in La Guajira to help us and turn in all the information that they can. What they’ve done with Lucho Diaz is not just to Lucho Diaz but to all of Colombia, and all of Colombia needs to react,” he told reporters.
The search for Diaz’s father is also the search for the footballer’s “hero”.
Diaz is from La Guajira, the isolated, northernmost region of Colombia, known for its high desert, wind-buffeted coastline and large indigenous Wayuu population.
Growing up Wayuu in the town of Barrancas, home to some 40,000 people, life was dominated by the hulking Cerrejon mine, the largest open-cast mine in South America. Diaz’s father is the source of his Wayuu heritage, with the family originally from the tiny nearby village of Lagunita de la Sierra.
Nicknamed Mr Mane, Luis Manuel’s life revolved around giving his children footballing opportunities, alongside wife Cilenis — the pair married last year, with Diaz returning to La Guajira for the wedding.
Diaz is one of three footballing sons, with brothers Roller and Jesus also footballers at lower levels. He also has a younger sister, Anny. The entire family are regular visitors to Anfield and except Jesus — who plays for Porto B — are still based in Colombia.
La Guajira is an impoverished region, and in Barrancas, most work is linked to the Cerrejon mine. Diaz’s father sold street food to workers, specifically a traditional Wayuu delicacy called friche, a type of goat stew.
In addition, he ran a small football school, where Diaz started out at the age of six. The team was based at Cerrejon, with Diaz playing alongside the miners’ children. “My dad is my hero,” he said a few years later. “He taught me how to play.”
Luis Manuel would also visit local market stands to source DVDs of his son’s other idol: Ronaldinho. A bit of the Brazilian’s flair filtered into the youngster’s game early on: Diaz dribbled with swagger and became famous locally for his repertoire of tricks.
Selling street food also helped pay for trips to trials. Diaz was chronically underweight as a child, which combined with the isolation of La Guajira, meant he was not picked up by a professional club until he was 17. With food tokens sometimes handed out to local children, Diaz developed a reputation for donating his tokens to his team-mates, claiming that he was not hungry, despite his frame.
Diaz pictured after he joined Atletico Junior, where he played before signing for Porto
After Diaz’s unlikely career took off, first in Colombia then at Porto, his father remained central in his career. Unable to attend his son’s Liverpool debut in person, Luis Manuel wept tears of joy as he watched Diaz’s cameo against Cardiff City on a mobile phone. Despite the shaky signal, he still saw a lively cameo, ending in Diaz being mobbed by teammates after assisting Takumi Minamino.
“The magic of Luis to enter and assist a colleague,” he told Blu Radio’s Blog Deportivo. “He’s been received with great fanfare and much affection.”
“Luis and him are very close,” says Carlos Aleman, a presenter for Bogota-based TV channel Win Sports. “They still talk every day,”
Despite his success, the family lives a similar life in La Guajira. They are still based in Barrancas, alongside other members of the wider family.
Luis Manuel’s coaching has since evolved into the Luis Diaz Esperanza Foundation, run by Diaz’s cousin Josher, which operates around 15 sports schools, including four in indigenous reservations — investing in a local community which has faced more than its fair share of problems.
La Guajira is one of the poorest regions of Colombia and shares a long border with Venezuela, with whom its economic fortunes have also been tied.
The Wayuu population is split between both countries, but recent decades have seen the indigenous people divided due to political differences between the right-wing politicians who governed Colombia until last year, and Venezuela’s own left-wing governments under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.
Growing up Wayuu brings with it systemic disadvantages. Known as the people of sun, sand, and the wind, theirs is a history of struggle, from stout rebellion against Spanish rule to bitter disputes with mining companies in the region.
“I think it’s his Wayuu identity that drives him,” said John Jairo Diaz, who is no relation but coached Luis Diaz at the Copa Americana de Pueblos Indigenas, a tournament for indigenous players. “It makes him want to maximise his potential.”
In 2017, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights reported to Colombia’s constitutional court that 4,470 Wayuu children had died from malnutrition or associated diseases over the preceding eight-year period, more than five times the national average.
Colombian president Gustavo Petro speaks during regional elections on Sunday (Sebastian Barros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Paramilitary forces have blighted the region since the 1960s, with the Wayuu caught in the crossfire between the government and groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). In 2004, when Diaz was seven, the right-wing Northern Bloc group killed 60 Wayuu in the nearby village of El Salado. The nearby Venezuelan border, as well as its isolation from Bogota, are both factors which have swelled paramilitary activity in the region.
In 2019, La Guajira was the most violent region of Colombia, with a homicide rate of 73.1 per 100,000 people.
Historically, the border has been more theoretical than effective, allowing passage between both nations to the Wayuu people. Though political disputes led to an attempt to enforce a hard border, smugglers and paramilitary forces still manage to regularly pass through undetected. Authorities are attempting to guard against Luis Manuel being taken across.
Regional elections were also taking place in Colombia on Sunday October 29, including in La Guajira, adding a political element to a story that is both global and, for Luis Diaz, deeply personal.
Additional reporting: Felipe Cardenas
(Top photos: Getty Images)
