The blood lemon prank a fitness coach played on Darwin Núñez at Peñarol

Some stories get told in locker rooms for years, and this is one of them. Fitness coach Alejandro Valenzuela opened up on the show Tarde de Fútbol on Caras y Caretas TV about one of his "crazy stunts" involving a player who now shines in Europe: Darwin Núñez.

Valenzuela was part of Diego "Memo" López's coaching staff at Peñarol between July 2018 and December 2019, and during that stretch he spent a full year working alongside Núñez, right in the middle of the forward's developmental years. By his own account, he liked to dig up unconventional tricks to fire up the squad after training sessions at Los Aromos.

"At Los Aromos I pulled off several crazy stunts. And anything I see, I end up connecting it to soccer somehow. I think the biggest one... The players always looked forward to the coach's talk after dinner," Valenzuela began, making clear those nighttime chats were already part of the group's routine.

But what came next was the real show. The fitness coach worked out a whole plan with the facility's kitchen staff to set up a scene worthy of any locker room with a sense of humor.

"One day, I told one of the cooks, 'when I ask for a lemon, hand me this one.' It was a lemon I'd injected with a needle full of red liquid; the lemon looked totally normal on the outside, and I also asked her to have a big knife ready..."Alejandro Valenzuela

With the scene set, it was time for the performance. Núñez had been missing some clear-cut scoring chances, and Valenzuela decided to use that as the excuse for the prank in front of the whole squad.

"So I started the talk and told them I was worried about Darwin Núñez, our goal-scoring shark in the box who didn't have his teeth anymore. 'What's wrong with him!' Because he'd just missed a couple of goals. And I asked for a lemon, and they handed it to me, and I rubbed it all over his body to see what was going on, like maybe something had been done to this beast, because this couldn't keep happening... And I asked for the knife and cut the lemon open!"Alejandro Valenzuela

The ending played out exactly as the fitness coach had hoped: total shock on the forward's face. "I opened it up and it was all red inside, and then I said: 'There you go, Darwin Núñez, now we've drained everything out of you.' And Darwin just stared at the lemon, completely confused!" he recalled, laughing.

Beyond the comedy of it all, Valenzuela made clear that behind every gag there was a concrete purpose tied to the day-to-day work with the squad.

"We were always pulling some kind of goofy stunt, that part was more clownish, but I always tried to tie it to the moment or the situation, looking to create a positive atmosphere," the fitness coach concluded, showing that working with players also comes down to those small moments that stay etched in a group's memory forever.