Hertha signing Agustín Rogel, 25, is very familiar with the clichés surrounding defenders from Uruguay. If you ask him about it, you’ll elicit a smile from him.
“There is a certain legacy,” says Rogel, “especially from the times before the introduction of the video referee, when one or the other put their foot in it a little harder.” He ticks completely differently. Not only because in his first four Bundesliga games, despite three yellow cards, he has shown himself to be a player who follows the rules despite all the toughness. But also because he is a Uruguayan central defender who once dreamed of taking the Hippocratic Oath: “I started studying medicine a few years ago. If football hadn’t worked out, I would have become a doctor,” he says .
Rogel interrupted his studies about five years ago – when the Krylia Sowetow Samara club lured him to Russia and he performed so well there that he was transferred to France to FC Toulouse. But after his debut in the League 1 he injured his shoulder so badly that he was out for a season. The pandemic and Toulouse’s relegation did the rest, he went back to South America, to Estudiantes de La Plata in Argentina. That was perfect. The players of Estudiantes are called “pincharratas”, roughly: laboratory rat poke, because many medical school students used to play there. “Carlos Bilardo became a doctor while he was playing at Estudiantes,” says Rogel of Argentina’s 1986 world champion coach.
He himself saw the time with Estudiantes as a kind of “revenge”, he says, which made his time in France forgotten. And meant that Hertha BSC became aware of him. When the current season had already started, manager Fredi Bobic flew to Argentina – and brought Rogel to Berlin.
The Bundesliga is faster, the spaces are narrower. So Rogel needs to read some more
Rogel admits he didn’t know much about Hertha, but the first impressions couldn’t be better. He praises the club’s infrastructure, the environment that is quieter than Argentina, the warm welcome from employees and playmates with whom he communicates in English or French – he still has to learn German. He also liked the last two games: Both against Leipzig (2: 3 after a 0: 3 deficit) and against Schalke (2: 1 after a late conceded equalizer), Hertha showed that they “know how to rebel against setbacks . To have such a character trait is not self-evident,” says Rogel.
Before the game this Friday at Werder Bremen (8.30 p.m.), coach Sandro Schwarz was full of praise for the newcomer: Rogel “fitted into the group very well” and was “also very quickly integrated into the tactical processes”. Adapting to the new habitat has made it easier for him to keep up. “Because of my biotype, I fit well into the Bundesliga,” says Rogel, who is 1.91 meters tall. “The league is very physical and very intense. I knew that I could strike the right note here.”
Schwarz had let him watch a few games upon arrival, although Rogel came on the fly in Argentina. Rogel thought that was right: “When I trained here for the first time, I thought: what’s going on here?” The rhythm is more intense than in Argentina, where there are many high-quality players, “but many are older, are finishing their careers and can only play intensively at certain moments,” says Rogel. “On average, all the players here are younger, in their mid-twenties, like me – they can march for 80 or 90 minutes.”
Intense means that there is a higher tempo, the ball has to be controlled in much tighter spaces, and there is a lot of space behind a defender due to the high pressure. “The key for me as a centre-back is to read the game as well as possible. To anticipate when the ball-carrying player is under pressure, so you can and must participate in the pressing. Or see when he lifts his head, to chip the ball or to play long, because then you have to prepare to run back.”
When he once had a growth spurt, the coach sent him backwards
His training as a defender took place at Nacional Montevideo – the traditional club from Uruguay’s capital, where now legendary striker Luis Suárez also plays. Rogel originally started out as a defensive midfielder. But when he got a growth spurt, his youth coach sent him backwards.
His father was also an ambitious footballer, he says – even if he didn’t make it to the professional level. The father also insisted that Agustín should not neglect his education. When the son had just made his debut at Nacional, he suffered a torn ligament in his knee. But he got good grades in school and loved biology above all, hence the path to medical school. “I needed a plan B. Not that I ended up without bread and cake,” says Rogel.
There are more and more Uruguayan professionals who have studied – a legacy of former national coach Óscar Washington Tabárez, who was once an elementary school teacher. “He left a great legacy,” says Rogel. Tabarez was replaced in December. Successor Diego Alonso recently made Rogel’s debut after defender Ronald Araújo was injured so badly that he has to fear for his World Cup appearance. So Rogel can dream of participating in Qatar.
But if he does stay in Berlin, he won’t be short of work there. The “Uru-Kante”, as the Berlin Boulevard has dubbed him, wants to examine the option of a long-distance university where he can resume his studies. What would he specialize in? “I won’t lie: traumatology,” says Rogel.