Antonio Mohamed lifted the Liga MX and in doing so kept a promise to his late son.
Antonio Mohamed had been quiet this week, a relative departure from his typical self. Earlier Sunday, before his Monterrey team played the second leg of the Liga MX final against Club America, Mohamed was spotted walking into the Basilica de Guadalupe. Just one member of the team's staff accompanied him as he moved past parishioners and a few reporters to offer up a prayer to La Virgen.
When he was asked for his comments about the game, the Monterrey manager choose to stay silent. When Leonel Vangioni final penalty went past America goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa to give Monterrey the Apertura title, the Monterrey couldn't have spoken if he wanted to.
His assistants swarmed him in celebration, but tears began to swell in his eyes, his hands together, separated only by the prayer beads he clutched.
Exactly what Mohamed was feeling, we may never know.
This was unfinished business for the Argentine manager. He won the Liga MX title with Tijuana in the 2012 Apertura. He won another with Club America in the 2014 Apertura. But the Mohamed magic ran out when he got to Monterrey. He lifted the Copa MX, but a pair of second-best finishes including a loss to Tigres in the first-ever final between the crosstown rivals made it difficult to call his time in La Sultana del Norte a success.
The hurt went far deeper than professional failure. Mohamed's son Farid grew up rooting for Monterrey, after the spell Mohamed spent with the club as a player between 1998–2000. But Farid's life was tragically cut short in 2006 by a car accident during the World Cup in Germany. Mohamed had made a pair of promises to his boy: That he would return to Huracan and get them back to the top division, and that he would return to Monterrey one day and win a title.
The promise now has been fulfilled, but it took a circuitous route to get there.
You could see what it meant to Mohamed, a man who has achieved all sorts of sporting success but admits there are days when he still feels more grief than joy. Tonight, for a moment, he can smile - his words made good, his promise kept, his job well done.