Uruguaysho

Atletico de Madrid's Diego Forlán never sat on a flight for longer than an hour without standing to do some quick calf raises, back stretches and a lap through the aisles to hydrate, reignite his metabolism and circulate blood more efficiently. "El Uruguayo" (pronounced "Uruguaysho" with the Southern Cone Spanish accent) subsists on a diet of lentils, spinach and grilled salmon. He doesn't know what beer tastes like.

When Spanish Men's Health featured Forlán on its cover, the airbrush whizzes curiously softened his polygonal torso musculature, marking the first time a magazine blunted their cover subject's finest attributes.

Michelangelo's Diego Forlán reveals the ideal form to which all health-conscious joggers should aspire and which American professional sports scouts, using descriptions typically reserved for livestock, would label "a specimen."

At least, these are the things I think in the moments after Forlán scores a screamer from distance and, with an expression as bright as his old Villarreal uniform, peels off his red and white stripes.

• 
  

When I arrived in Madrid, I couldn't wait to go to my first La Liga match and watch Forlán fly through midfield, receive a throughball at the top of the 18, take one touch into space behind a defender with the outside of his foot, and on the the next step, fire a high, bending scorcher past an alarmed goalie's flailing fist.

Forlán has been one of the decade's premier goal-scorers, twice winning La Liga's Pichichi Trophy for top goal scorer in the country and the European Golden Shoe for top scorer on the continent or Isle, even scoring twice to beat Fulham in the 2010 UEFA Cup final. He was never better than at the 2010 World Cup where his five goals and overall outstanding play (watch the shocked reactions of the Dutch defenders after his 30-yard strike) earned him the tournament's Golden Ball as best player. He and Luis Suarez's palm (2 feet 1 hand) carried an unlikely Uruguay to the semifinals where they lost to Holland and then Germany in the consolation match. Still, Forlán scored two of the tournament's most beautiful goals (the aforementioned rocket among dismayed Dutch and this impossible to replicate scissor strike against Germany) in those defeats.

Strangely, Forlán failed to maintain that form in the club campaign. I went to five games and never saw him score. In fact, the last game I attended, Atletí, with Kun Aguero and Diego Costa starting up front, overwhelmed Real Sociedad and Forlán jogged on as a mid-second half sub with his team already leading 2-0. The team was in the middle of una buena racha, piling up wins and charging toward a fifth-place point total (tied with Sevilla and Atheltic Bilbao, they finished seventh with tiebreaker rules) and a spot in Europe with their star little more than a late-in-game, change-of-pace substitute. As Marca.com wrote in May, "A year ago, he was a superhero, now he is almost an outlaw" after a disappointing season of injuries, struggles with fitness and, most damning, a feud with manager Quique Sánchez Flores.

• 
  

Although he hadn't scored a goal in twelve previous international matches, Forlán was back in form for the Copa América. Last Sunday, Madrid's bars filled with rowdy Latinos, Atletí fans and the regular crowd craving some meaningful soccer for the first time since May (the USA/Mexico Gold Cup final didn't exactly pry Madrileños' attention from the sports dailies' constant Cesc, Kun, Neymar transfer rumors).

I waited to meet friends outside a bar in the La Latina neighborhood, the city's Sunday hotspot, and ducked in every few minutes to watch the action. When I heard the noise inside swell and burst through the windows, I squeezed between the bouncing Uruguayans and got hugged by two guys in beer-splattered light blue jerseys while replays of Luis Suarez's goal played on the big screen in front of us. Just as my friends arrived at our meeting spot, the frenzy again erupted from the overheated, sticky barroom. I slipped in among the ecstatic Uruguayan expats, as if intruding on some decadent religious rite, and watched the goal replay. Forlán had nabbed a loose ball and netted immediately. In the second half, he scored another that sealed the 3-0 victory and provoked a concert of staccato U-RU-GUAY-O chants and devotional songs, which punctured the heavy evening heat for the first time in a year.