Argentina. It is home to more than 40 million people, one of the most successful World Cup teams and N.C. State men’s soccer coach George Tarantini. In recent years, Tarantini has taken advantage of his nation’s surplus of talent by recruiting multiple Argentines to play for the Wolfpack.
It started in 2002 with Federico Peria, who led the team in assists for three straight seasons. Martin Cini and Santiago Fusilier came next in 2003. While Cini stayed for only one season, Fusilier was one of the captains of last year’s squad and started 63 games for State.
But now only one remains. Ernesto Di Laudo, the last of the Argentines, joined the Pack in 2004 and is a native of the nation’s capital, Buenos Aires.
Because he lived on an entirely different continent, Di Laudo had never heard of State until the day when Tarantini came to town.
“I was playing in a league back home,” Di Laudo, an industrial engineering major, said. “I heard about a tryout that some coach from [a] university in the States was coming to. Coach saw me playing, and he thought it would be a good idea for him to ask me to come here. From the very beginning he focused on the school side of things. He asked me what I wanted to study and what I wanted to do — what was my objective.”
Di Laudo’s objective was to obtain an engineering degree, and given State’s strength in that field, it was an ideal fit. But being from an entirely different culture made it difficult for Di Laudo to adapt to the American way of life.
“Argentina is a third-world country,” Di Laudo said. “Every place you go, everything is really crowded — traffic and even school. Here everything is really organized. Back home you have to fight for everything you do. But here everything is assigned — everyone knows [what] to do, where they have to go. It takes a while to get used to that.”
So he relied on his teammates, specifically his roommates Fusilier and El Hadj Cisse, to help him make the adjustment. According to Cisse, a senior forward and native of the Ivory Coast, said soccer is “very different” in the U.S. than it is in other countries.
Because Tarantini also grew up in the same atmosphere where soccer — better known as “futbol” — was “the way of life,” Di Laudo said this caused the coach to have high expectations for him.
“I came all the way from where he is, and we both know what soccer means down in Argentina,” Di Laudo said. “Although I’m Argentine like he is, it’s not like things are going to be easier for me. At the beginning it was really tough on me to tell you the truth. It was like, ‘Why is he making me work so hard?’ “
Tarantini explained that he pushed Di Laudo because he knew what he was capable of — both on and off the field.
“Di Laudo will graduate in three and a half years as an engineer,” Tarantini said. “When recruiting a student-athlete to N.C. State, [we look for] the 33 factor: 33 percent to be a great soccer player, 33 percent to be a great student and 34 percent to be a great person. That’s the formula to play at N.C. State. I think he has all the three requisites that we look for.”
Although he has not recruited athletes from Argentina and abroad in recent years, Tarantini said he would “like to see people from all over the world” come to State in the near future.
Upon receiving his degree in December, Di Laudo plans to return home to begin the next phase of his life. He said he has no further aspirations to play soccer, but credits Tarantini and the University for giving him the tools to succeed.
“It is probably going to be really tough for me when I go back to that crazy, crazy world,” Di Laudo said. “I think this is the perfect place. It gave me really what I needed — focus on school and focus on soccer.
“Every experience I’ve lived — bad or good — has taught me different things. Right now, I really value all the things I’ve done, all the things I’ve learned. Hopefully, I’ll be ready for the next period of my life.”
