Carlos Caszely

Carlos Humberto Caszely Garrido (Santiago, July 5, 1950) is a Chilean sports journalist and former professional soccer player who played as a striker. He is considered one of the best Chilean soccer players in history and one of the greatest idols and references of the Colo-Colo club. In this team he played for 15 seasons, in which he won five national championships and three Chilean cups and obtained a runner-up in the Copa Libertadores. Abroad, he defended Levante and Español in Spain, and Barcelona Sporting Club in Ecuador, a team from which he retired in 1987.

He participated in the 1974 and 1982 World Cups with the Chilean national team, played 49 games and scored 29 goals (7 in official matches and 22 in friendlies), and although he is the sixth top scorer in the history of the Chilean national team After Alexis Sánchez, Eduardo Vargas, Marcelo Salas, Iván Zamorano and Arturo Vidal, he surpasses everyone in effectiveness, reaching an average goal of 0.59 per game, which makes him the most effective scorer in the history of the national team. national. Now, if all the matches played by the Chilean soccer team in its history are considered, including those against local clubs or teams, Carlos Caszely is the second highest scorer for the national team with 42 goals in 73 games.

He was the trigoleador of the Chilean championship, goalscorer of the Copa Libertadores 1973 and the best player of the Copa América 1979. He is, to date, the top scorer in the history of Colo-Colo in official matches with 208 goals, and the second in First Division matches with 171 goals.

Personal life

Third son of René Caszely, a railway employee, and Olga Garrido. He grew up in a house on Juan Espejo street located in the San Eugenio neighborhood, in the Santiago commune. As a child he studied at the Liceo Dario E. Salas and played soccer for the amateur Los Diablos Rojos team, where he himself trained with his neighbors. ^{[citation needed ]}

After dating for a year, he married María de los Angeles Guerra on November 6, 1973, with whom he had four children; Claudia, Barbara, Valerie and Piero, his spouse passed away on February 22, 2022 due to cancer, a disease that had afflicted him for some time.

Trajectory

First time in Colo-Colo

Trained in the lower divisions of Colo-Colo, he made his debut with the first team in 1967, in a friendly against Peñarol that ended 1:1. He played his first official match on July 30 of the same year, against Santiago Morning.

In 1970 and 1972 they were league champions. In addition, he was runner-up and top scorer in the Copa Libertadores de América in 1973. Before traveling to Europe, he scored 75 goals for the white team (66 in the Chilean First Division and 9 in the Copa Libertadores).

Levante and Espanyol

His good performances took him to Spain, his transfer to Spanish soccer was one of the most expensive of the time in South America, where he played for Levante UD and RCD Espanyol de Barcelona. Playing for Levante he scored 15 goals in 24 games in the Spanish 2nd division and 26 goals in 32 games in the Spanish 3rd division. In the 1975/76 Spanish First Division season, he became the top scorer for his RCD Espanyol team with 13 goals. Playing for Espanyol, he scored 29 goals, 20 in the Spanish first division, 8 in the Copa del Rey and 1 in the UEFA Cup. In 2015 he was voted one of the best players in the history of Espanyol by his fans, earning him the honor of having one of the gates of the RCDE Stadium bear his name.

Second period in Colo-Colo and Barcelona Sporting Club

He returned to Colo-Colo in 1978, where he won three Leagues (1979, 1981 and 1983) and was top scorer in 1979, 1980 and 1981, he retired in 1985. Luis Santibáñez took him to Barcelona Sporting Club, where he scored a goal in the only match he played (against Deportivo Quito) in the 1986 Copa Libertadores.

Goals in Colo Colo

Caszely is the top scorer in the history of Colo Colo with 208 goals in 373 official matches, surpassing Francisco Valdés Muñoz who reached 205 goals in 413 official matches. He is also the second top scorer for Colo-Colo in the League Chilean with 171 goals in 288 games, (after Francisco Valdés with 179 goals in 354 games) and the third in Copa Libertadores with 15 goals in 35 games (after Francisco Valdés with 20 goals in 44 games and Esteban Paredes with 20 goals in 31 games). He and also the top scorer for national Cups with 22 goals in 50 games played.

The Republic Cup was included in the Official Tournament of 1983, the teams could obtain bonus points for the final of the national championship.

National team

His first class A match was against Argentina, replacing Alberto Fouillioux. More than 22 thousand people witnessed the tie to one against the trans-Andean team played on May 28, 1969.

With the Chilean soccer team, he qualified for the World Cup in Germany in 1974 and Spain in 1982. For Caszely his first game in a World Cup ended in failure, in Germany the Chilean was the first expelled in a World Cup with the card system red card implemented by FIFA. Caszely had already been reprimanded by the Turkish Doğan Babacan with a yellow card after 13 minutes. 56 minutes later, Carlos Humberto was sent off with a direct red card.

The following years, including the qualifying competition for the 1978 Argentina World Cup, due to political differences with the military dictatorship, he was separated from the Chilean National Team. It was not until 1979 that he was nominated again to defend Chile in the Copa América where he was the best player of the tournament leading Chile to be runner-up. In the 1982 Spain qualifiers he was once again a figure qualifying for the World Cup. Then, in 1983, he was removed from the National Team again, this time from the Copa América of the same year, suspecting that it was for political reasons, but the leader Rolando Molina attributes it to the striker's advanced age.

Carlos Caszely is the fifth all-time goalscorer for the Chilean National Soccer Team in type A matches after Alexis Sánchez, Eduardo Vargas, Marcelo Salas and Iván Zamorano, and he is constantly mentioned among the 5 greatest soccer players of all time in Chile. He retired from the national team in 1985, with 49 class A matches and 29 goals. On the other hand, if all the matches played by the Chilean soccer team in its history are considered, including those against local clubs or teams, Carlos Caszely would be the second top scorer for the national team with 42 goals in 73 games.

Participations in World Cups

World	Headquarters	Outcome	PJ
1974 World Cup Soccer	Germany	First round	2
1982 World Cup Soccer	Spain	First round	2

Participations in World Cup Qualifiers

Elimination	Country	Outcome	Position	PJ	Goles
Germany 1974	GermanyGermany	Classified	Repechage	4	0
Spain 1982	SpainSpain	Classified	1st Group 3	3	2
Mexico 1986	Mexico Mexico	Eliminated	Second round	3	2

Participations in Copa América

After retirement

Politics

Caszely met with presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet in 2013.

Caszely has been called "the Chilean soccer player who has most openly ventured into the field of politics." During the government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973) he was close to Popular Unity, explicitly supporting deputy Gladys Marín and Senator Volodia Teitelboim, communist parliamentarians who were seeking re-election in the 1973 parliamentary elections; Marín referred to him as "not only a great athlete, but a young man who understands the revolutionary process his country is experiencing". Caszely himself defined himself as a socialist in 1983, ten years after Allende's overthrow.

After the 1973 coup, the relationship between Caszely and the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet was tense. When the national team went to the Diego Portales building to be fired by General Pinochet before leaving for the 1974 World Cup in Germany, Cazsely refused to shake the dictator's hand. The popular version of the incident claims that Caszely left Pinochet with his hand outstretched, but the truth is that he simply ignored it: when greetings, he fixed his gaze on an imaginary horizon. During the dictatorship, his mother was kidnapped and suffered a beating at the hands of security agents in 1974; six years later, the footballer called to reject the Constitution proposed in the 1980 plebiscite. In 1988 he participated, along with his mother, in the television slot of the "No" option, in opposition to Pinochet, prior to the plebiscite of that year.

In 1997, seven years after the end of the dictatorship, the Party for Democracy (PPD) offered him to be a candidate for deputy for the districts of La Reina or Melipilla, a proposal that Caszely rejected on the grounds that they only wanted him to use his image. He worked with Joaquín Lavín, managing sports projects while he was mayor of Santiago, and in the 2000s he was chosen by President Ricardo Lagos to be part of the Bicentennial Commission, being the only member of it to come from the world of sports. sport.

In November 2013, he supported the presidential candidacy of Michelle Bachelet, participating in her electoral fringe. his dismissal from office, after giving an interview to the newspaper El Mundo where he linked the political party Podemos with the government of Nicolás Maduro.

Music

In 1981, in the midst of the euphoria that the soccer team's qualification to the World Cup the following year had caused in Chile, Caszely recorded two songs written by the composer Nelson Catalán, called "El fan" and "Running after the ball". "El fan" received a high rotation on the radio and had a video clip, one of the first made in Chile, which was directed by Gonzalo Bertrán and recorded at the National Stadium in Santiago. After the failure in the World Cup, Caszely did not participate in music again until 2008, when the punk band Les Miserables recorded a new version of "El fan" with him, as a tribute.

Cinema, television and radio

In 1988, he appears in the film Consuelo by Luis R. Vera, in which he personifies a man inside a canteen and who fights with the protagonist for allegedly flirting with his girlfriend (Consolation). In 2013, the comedian and impersonator Stefan Kramer released his second film entitled Citizen Kramer where he has a small intervention when the protagonist is looking for projects for a foundation.

Until December 2008, he worked as a sports journalist and commentator on Deportes 13, the sports area of Canal 13 de Chile, participating in live broadcasts of professional soccer and co-animating the program Pelotas, weekly summary of Chilean football. He is a journalist with a degree from the University of Santiago, a graduate of Physical Education from the University of Chile, and a Business Administrator from the University of Navarra, Spain.

Amateurism

Currently Carlos Caszely actively participates playing in the Independent Soccer League.

Statistics

Clubs

Club	Season	League		Nac Cup.		Inter Cup.		Total
		Part.	Goles	Part.	Goles	Part.	Goles	Part.	Goles
Colo-Colo Chile	1967	3	0	-	-	-	-	3	0
	1968	22	20	-	-	-	-	22	20
	1969	23	13	-	-	-	-	23	13
	1970	25	14	-	-	-	-	25	14
	1971	12	4	-	-	-	-	12	4
	1972	28	14	-	-	-	-	28	14
	1973	3	1	-	-	13	9	16	10
	Total	116	66	-	-	13	9	129	75
Levante UD Spain	1973/74	24	15	-	-	-	-	24	15
	1974/75(*)	32	26	-	-	-	-	32	26
	Total	56	41	-	-	-	-	56	41
RCD English Spain	1975/76	21	13	6	4	-	-	27	17
	1976/77	9	5	7	4	1	1	17	10
	1977/78	16	2	1	0	-	-	17	2
	Total	46	20	14	8	1	1	61	29
Colo-Colo Chile	1978	16	8	-	-	-	-	16	8
	1979	23	20	8	3	-	-	31	23
	1980	32	26	?	?	6	3	38	29
	1981	26	20	?	?	-	-	26	20
	1982	20	7	?	?	6	1	26	8
	1983	27	20	?	?	6	1	31	24
	1984	19	3	?	?	-	-	19	10
	1985	7	1	-	-	4	1	11	4
	Total	170	105	50	22	22	6	239	133
Barcelona SC Ecuador	1986	8	4	-	-	1	1	9	5
	Total	8	4	-	-	1	1	9	5
Total club goals		396	236	64	30	37	17	497	283

Summary of goals

(*) The 32 games in the Third Division of Spain and the 26 goals scored are not considered in the summary of goals.

Honours of Prizes

National Championships

Title	Club	Country	Year
First Division of Chile	Colo-Colo	ChileChile	1970
First Division of Chile			1972
First Division of Chile			1979
First Division of Chile			1981
Copa Chile			1981
Copa Chile			1982
First Division of Chile			1983
Copa Chile			1985

Individual awards

Predecessor: Francisco Valdés Muñoz	Captain of Colo-Colo 1976-1979	Successor: Leonel Herrera Rojas
Predecessor: Leonel Sánchez	Top scorer of the Chilean football team 1981-1998	Successor: Marcelo Salas