Summer signing Luis Díaz in profile: Lucho the fighter

Bayern’s new winger Luis Díaz is a rocket. He was a late bloomer during his youth in Colombia, but in Munich he’s immediately made his mark. He tells us what he learned from his dad on the football ground in his hometown, how that period shaped him to this day and his ambitions with FCB.

It couldn’t have really been predicted that the Colombian winger would one day end up at FC Bayern after spells in Portugal and northern England. “As a child, we were always huge fans of the Colombian national team. Falcao, Juan Cuadrado or goalkeeper David Ospina were our role models in football. And James Rodríguez, of course.”

‘Schweinsteiger or something?’

At home, the town of Barrancas in the brutally hot north-east of Colombia, football flickers across the televsion in the Díaz household every day. “I’ve always watched a lot of football,” Díaz says about his youth. “When I’m at home I watch everything, really. My first memories of FC Bayern are Robben and Ribéry.” There you have it. Bayern’s best wingers are the role models whose footsteps he wants to now follow in. “And then there was a player called Schweinsteiger or something, yes? I remember the 2013 Champions League final, when Bayern beat Dortmund, very well. That left an impression on me.”

How fast time goes – and yet how far away 8,700 kilometres are. FC Bayern impressed him on the TV screen, but the world looks different in Barrancas. The streets are dusty, the climate tropical and oppressive with temperatures around 30 degrees all year long. The town lies between the border to Venezuela and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range, a long way from Colombia’s key trade and transport routes. Large mango trees lend shade, tuk-tuks rattle loudly back and forth, there’s always music playing somewhere. Life for the approximately 20,000 residents is slowly advancing. “My Barrancas is wonderful!” states Díaz. “I wouldn’t want to swap this home for anywhere. I love it and always have a bit of a longing for my family, my school pals and childhood friends, almost all of whom still live there.”

Back when ‘Robbery’ provided excitement on TV, Luis was still ‘Luis Fer’, as his mother calls him. His father Manuel ran a football school directly in front of the grandparents’ house. Until recently, he looked after over 100 kids in four age groups.

There are hardly any club structures in rural Colombia – a ‘football school’ normally just means that someone organises regular training. But for Manuel Díaz, teaching Luis and his younger brothers Jesús and Roller (pronounced ‘Rodger’) the basics of football was a labour of love. “Quick turns, close ball control. Díaz was always a player who liked to produce magic now and then. But for the benefit of the team.” You could be forgiven for thinking his father was describing Lucho’s performance in the 6-0 win over RB Leipzig, when he scored one and set up two goals for Harry Kane. But these are memories of his son’s talent on the local village square. “Our father put emphasis on working a lot with the ball,” recalls Lucho. “So there were lots of game-related drills. Otherwise, it was always about ball control and passing. And he always said: ‘Goles son amores’ – goals are love.”

In the scouting wilderness

The lanky Díaz soon attracted a lot of attention, but the province of La Guajira was a veritable scouting wilderness at the time – talent scouts from the big clubs rarely visited. When he came of age in 2015, Díaz was still playing for an insignificant amateur club in the neighbouring town of Albania. No big club had discovered him.

Again it was dad Manuel who seized the initiative and contacted a distant acquaintance at Club Junior de Barranquilla. “And then we asked if I could come for a trial training session,” recalls Luis. Perhaps the last chance of a professional football career. The Sharks from the port city on the Caribbean coast are a big name in Colombian football and their stadium, the Estadio Metropolitano, is the largest in the country. However, it was unlikely that the club would sign a slight, nearly 19-year-old.

Name says it all

It was the start of an extremely difficult period of Díaz’s life. His trial was just extended day by day. “For weeks I was waiting for the sentence: ‘You can come back tomorrow’,” he recalls. With every day, ‘Luis Fer’ turned more into ‘Lucho’. The latter is a nickname for Luis but also means ‘I fight’ in Spanish. “Every evening, I told myself that I mustn't give up, that I had to keep fighting because I had to do it for my family too. That's what motivated me.”

In the big city of Barranquilla, he initially lived with a great-uncle, “in a pretty rough neighbourhood”, according to Díaz. “Every few days someone was attacked, there were thefts, even murder.” Díaz missed his family and the small-town life in Barrancas, where everyone knows everyone. “There was never enough money. The journey to training was really long and I only had a few thousand pesos a day, i.e. maybe one or two euros.” Díaz grimaces. It wasn’t that long ago. “Sometimes there wasn't even enough to eat."

Then came the commitment. The dream of a whole family seemed to come true. The coaches at Junior were convinced by his talent, but also had concerns. “We were weighed every day, and at the start I was 58 kilos, can you imagine! I was really skinny. I didn’t have any muscles,” admits Díaz. “But that was never a big issue for me. I just wanted to play football and get better.”

At Junior he underwent a special training programme including muscle development training and a diet plan. He understood how important diet is at this level and quickly gained in mass and strength, without losing his lightness. But he was sent to local second-division team Barranquilla FC, Athletic’s feeder club. The big time in football had receded into the distance once again.

Then, however, talented players with a particular ethnic background were sought in Colombia for a South American championship for indigenous peoples, which was being held for the first time. Almost half of the population of the La Guajira department are Wayuu. Not the Díaz family, as mother Cilenis explains, but the chance to travel abroad with a national team for the first time was a one-off. What’s more, the coach was none other than Carlos Valderrama, the curly-haired cult hero of the Colombian teams at the World Cups in 1990, 1994 and 1998. Díaz was desperate to be there.

The tournament was a great success as Colombia finished second and Lucho was promoted to the first team at Barranquilla soon afterwards. After a year in the second tier, he made his top-flight debut back at Junior at the age of 20. And he hit the ground running. Just 14 months later, in September 2018, he made his full debut for the Colombian national team, alongside youth idols Falcao, Cuadrado and Ospina. Only James Rodríguez was missing from Lucho’s international debut due to injury – at the time an FC Bayern player. To this day, Díaz and James have played dozens of games together for Los Cafeteros (‘The Coffee Growers’). At last year’s Copa América, the duo were at the heart of the attack as Colombia reached the final, only losing narrowly to world champions Argentina. “James congratulated me on my move to Bayern,” reveals Lucho about one of his first conversations after his signing in Munich. “He said it’s the perfect club for me and I’ll definitely feel at home in Munich. He wishes me a lot of titles!”

Díaz has won league titles and cups at every club in his professional career: two Colombian championships with Junior de Barranquilla and two domestic doubles with FC Porto, where he made the step to Europe in 2019. At the start of 2022, he signed for Liverpool FC, where he won all the national competitions at least once before leaving in 2025. He was welcomed to Anfield by German coach Jürgen Klopp. “He put his arm around me and said that I was welcome and that we can speak about anything,” recalls Díaz. “He gave me the feeling that we were on the same wavelength. Klopp had a great energy, he was always in a good mood, very warm. The Germans aren’t as cold as some say!”

Lucho himself has a similarly warm personality and was already considered a positive leader within the team at Liverpool. Down-to-earth, likeable, family-oriented. “I like the simple life. That's typical for us people from the Caribbean region. I like to drink coffee on the street or sometimes I can just hang out at home for hours with my family, laughing or crying.”

Lucho has worked his way up right to the top, overcoming many hurdles in his childhood and youth and never losing sight of his goal. With the same purposefulness he’s now dribbling through defences and dancing around opponents in the Bundesliga. “It comes quite easily to me,” he says of his favourite tricks. It's as if he were still on the bumpy football pitch in Barrancas. That time continues to shape him to this day: "I would tell ten-year-old Luis to always remain as humble as he is. And never to lose his will to win! It's important for us footballers to always remain hungry.”

Only his muscle mass is now very different. He’s a good eater, he affirms. His favourite food? “In Colombia?” he asks back. “Coconut rice with fried red snapper. And at home in La Guajira, my favourite dish is roast goat with cornmeal balls.” Sounds delicious. We're curious to hear what he thinks of pretzels and pork knuckle. His story in Munich is just beginning.

This profile feature comes from the current September edition of club magazine ‘51’ – it appears here in an abridged version: