When Alexander Mostovoi , one of the two best players in Celta de Vigo's history , wanted to leave El Molinón during a game against Sporting in 1997 , the club removed him for eight days from training and fined him two million pesetas, about 12,000 euros . A ridiculous amount if we look at the latest penalty imposed by the team from Vigo for the umpteenth gruesomeness of Pione Sisto , one of their most talented and troubled footballers in Balaídos' offices .

The Dane, the son of a refugee couple from the South Sudan Civil War, has been fined € 60,000 , the highest figure in the club's history. Sisto, who had regained ownership and was playing a key role in Celta's last league weeks, left Vigo at the end of March , took a car with his sister and drove 3,000 kilometers by road to Denmark. Not even confinement due to the state of alarm could stop him. He did not notify anyone and the club learned of his flight when he was already several borders away. “I knew there would be consequences but it was worth doing. I would repeat it ”, he stressed in an interview in the Danish newspaper Politiken , which he also confessed that during the last World Cup in Russia he suffered a depression that was the beginning of all his ills, on and off the field.

«I could not bear to be criticized, physically I was collapsed . It caused me a depression. I was in shit and I didn't know what I wanted to do ». And he admits that these last two years he has only struggled "to be happy." "I've never been through something so hard, I've had a struggle between my old self and who I want to be," he explains. Hence, during the first weeks of quarantine in his country, Sisto dedicated himself to "training mental health." " I focused on meditating, " he said. He did not train the physicist or the technique until many days later. First, the mind. A detail that will surprise all those who are not accustomed to the Pione Universe: absences in training in January 2019, anger of the coaches with him, 21 days eating fruit in May of last year until he became " a little crazy ", recovery with Oscar García and fights with him after being substituted in a January game. "It goes upside down," Iago Aspas admitted with a laugh after finishing a match.

And the movie doesn't end on his trip to Denmark. He returned to Galicia the weekend of May 2, again without notifying the club, who found out a few days later. On Thursday 7, when the League authorized the coronavirus tests, the footballer appeared at the clinic but refused to pass the test , according to Faro de Vigo and this newspaper was able to confirm. He left the hospital and locked himself in the house for several days, among thousands of rumors that affirmed an alleged contagion and others that recognized a Celtic sanction that was not made public. In the club, silence. He did not appear in the sports city despite the fact that his colleagues were already training in small groups, and the only thing that was known about him was thanks to the videos he posted on his Instagram account .

10 days ago Celta fined him and Pione agreed to pass, this time, the second round of testing. He tested negative and has been training in A Madroa for several days. On the first day, yes, he arrived at the facilities ignoring all the rules that the club had stipulated for the entry of personnel. He parked his car outside the sports city and arrived in street clothes, when the club had asked the players to wear training gear. In between, some forceful, and not very concrete, statements by President Carlos Mouriño: « Pione has a problem and does not collaborate to solve it . It is a problem that we cannot talk about ».

As Celta prepares for the return to action in the League and fans wonder what really happened to the player, Óscar García tries to recover for the cause, again, a striker who has always made his nerves nervous. trainers for their attitude and that they are losing value in the market. Its price came to be around 15 million , but the Vigo club knows that to place it it will have to lower, and much its claims. Despite everything, and adding that he has not made an effort to learn Spanish, Sisto is adored in the dressing room for his uniqueness. "He is an excellent partner," says Brais Méndez.

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