They call Tucumán El Jardin de la República, the Garden of Argentina, a somewhat misleading name for the smallest, most densely populated and one of the most deprived parts of the country. It was here, in Barrio Soeme, an area of unpaved roads and simple, single-storey concrete housing on the outskirts of the region’s capital, San Miguel de Tucumán, that Roberto Pereyra’s story began.
“It is still El Jardin de la República, but it’s also true that nowadays Tucumán is in a very bad state,” Pereyra says. “People live in terrible poverty, you see it every day. Of course, there are wealthy people, but the majority have hard lives. They have difficult lives. This is where I was born and where I started to play football. Of course, it’s where my family is, all my friends from home are still there. People who have supported me from the beginning. There were hard times for me but the worst times are now over. Now I am here, and I enjoy where I am.”
Tucumán’s nickname comes from its status as one of the centres of Argentinian agriculture. In recent years it has become the world’s largest producer of lemons, an industry that employs 50,000 people in the region including Pereyra’s father, Leonides. “My family is still in the same home, the home I grew up in,” says the Watford midfielder. “My father has had his job now for many years but at the beginning it was different. There were times when he didn’t have a job. My father was the only person in our family who could work and when he wasn’t working we didn’t have anything to eat.”
After his son made his international debut in 2014, Leonides spoke to his local newspaper in San Miguel de Tucumán. “This is like a never-ending dream,” he said. “But it is worth thinking about what we have been through, to now be feeling so much pleasure. My wife and I created a humble family and we learned to appreciate the food that through hard work I was able to bring home to give my children. This story is like a fairytale. Now he’s sharing a dressing room with players like Messi and Agüero.
“When I spoke to him three days ago he told me he couldn’t believe what was happening. He told me that, in these moments, he remembered the days when he ran around the backstreets of Barrio Soeme chasing a football. This is better than any dream.”
Having honed his skills on the streets around his home, Pereyra started to play for a youth team in the city run by UTA, Argentina’s road transport union. When he was 15 he starred in a tournament played in Necochea, south of Buenos Aires, and was offered the chance to train at weekends with a club in nearby Mar del Plata. The only hitch was that it was a little over 1,600km away from home. And so he travelled by bus, a journey that took at least 15 hours each way, and spent the time daydreaming of one day emulating his childhood hero, Ariel Ortega, who had played for River Plate before moving to Europe. “At the beginning, that’s what I had to do,” he says. “It was a very difficult period. There were a lot of sacrifices, but because of them I have reached this moment.”
Pereyra ended up playing for River Plate before moving to Europe, and these days he travels to training in a matt black Maserati. As he trains there, surrounded by manicured lawns and cricket squares, with his wife and infant son now installed at their luxurious new home nearby, those sacrifices must seem very distant. “I still have the desire to win and to improve. That’s always there,” he says. “Having a nice car, it’s something I never had before. For a long time I could not have any car. Now I have a car and a nice car it’s something that I take pride in and that I enjoy.”
There have been a few unusual twists in a career that has now brought him, aged 25, to Watford. He left River in 2011, after their first ever relegation to Argentina’s second division, to join Udinese, overcame debilitating homesickness – he calls his first few months in Italy “un periodo nero” – to establish himself in the team and three years later he moved to Juventus.
In Turin he expected, at least at first, to be an occasionally glimpsed back-up to a midfield that already included Andrea Pirlo, Arturo Vidal, Claudio Marchisio and Paul Pogba. Instead, as a result of his own good form and injuries to others, he made 52 appearances in his first season as Juve won a domestic double and lost to Barcelona in the Champions League final. In his second year it was he who suffered injuries and after making only nine starts it ended with a move to Vicarage Road.
“This is a positive step for me,” he says. “It’s an important step on a personal level. It allows me to really show myself, to show my skills. Sometimes you have great periods and sometimes you have downs. This is a period in my life and I’m happy to be here. Juventus and Watford are different clubs. They fight for different things. But I’m here to show what I can do and to help Watford achieve their objectives.”
For the first time Pereyra has joined a club that expects him not only to play but to star. In Italy he spent time in every midfield position but this season it appears that his primary role will be offensive, linking midfield and attack. His record of 15 goals in 229 senior appearances does not immediately suggest that he is naturally at home in the opposition penalty area, but with a goal and an assist in his first game and a half in England he has started promisingly.
Lithe yet wiry, decorated with the modern footballer’s regulation assortment of tattoos and shoes that sparkle ostentatiously in the early autumn sun, he seems to possess a natural athleticism. “I like to dribble a lot, I like to run all over the pitch,” he says. “If I have to defend I defend, and if I have an opportunity to score I will score. I’m very happy with how I am.
“I’ll do my best and I’m sure the results will follow. We aim to stay in the Premier League, in this beautiful league which is one of the best in the world, and to be competitive. And I hope that if I play regularly and show my best, I will get the call from Argentina again.”
During the interview Pereyra receives a text message and picks up his phone. It is from Pogba, whose Manchester United side visit Vicarage Road on Sunday afternoon in the latest test of Watford’s ambitions. “He’s an extraordinary player,” Pereyra says of the Frenchman. “He’s got everything, all the skills you can think of. He’s one of the few players who really surprised me the first time I saw him play. But we’re ready to play against anyone. We all know it’s going to be difficult but this is football. Anything can happen.” Pereyra, more than most, has learned that lesson the hard way.
