Davinson Sanchez had been there in 2018. So had Johan Mojica and Jefferson Lerma. James Rodriguez? He’d been there in 2018 and 2014 — the same as Santiago Arias, David Ospina, Juan Fernando Quintero, Camilo Vargas.They had been absent eight years — eight painful years — but Colombia’s squad was positively dripping with World Cup history.They carried stories with them, especially the class of 2014: thrashing Japan in the grasslands of Cuiaba; Rodriguez’s volley against Uruguay at the Maracana; quarter-final heartache against hosts Brazil. All of it, the wistfulness and the war stories, the nostalgia and the nagging aches, came with them to Mexico for their Group K opener against Uzbekistan.You could have called it baggage. You could also have called it institutional memory.Luis Diaz, though? He had yet to taste it.Diaz made his Colombia debut two months after Russia 2018. At that point, the idea that he would become his country’s best player would have seemed far-fetched. He was a late developer, a kid who had almost slipped through the cracks. He was 21 but still turning out for Junior de Barranquilla in his homeland’s top flight. No European side had come along to poach him as a teenager. Playing for Colombia at all was an achievement.Before the next World Cup, four years later, Diaz was not far off being a global star. He’d left for Porto in 2019, lit up the 2020-2021 Champions League and earnt a move to Liverpool in January 2022. He lit up the Premier League, too. When the World Cup began in Qatar later that year, though, he was watching from home — just like all of his compatriots. Colombia had flubbed qualification — a national disaster, but also a huge personal disappointment.“It hurts. It hurts so much,” he told Colombian magazine Soho in November 2022, just before the tournament start. “I wish I could turn back time. Watching it is going to be agony, but God has a plan for everyone. We’ve got to give it our all to make it to the next World Cup.”They did make it. It wasn’t always pretty, but they got the job of qualifying done. You could see how much it mattered to them when they lined up to sing Colombia’s national anthem at the Azteca on Wednesday night. You could see how much it mattered to Diaz. His eyes, moist with tears, told the story.Diaz scored Colombia’s second goal against Uzbekistan to put them back in front (Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images)Things have changed for Diaz, now 29, since the disappointment of 2022.On 29 October 2023, his parents were abducted near a petrol station in their hometown of Barrancas in Colombia’s north east. Diaz’s mother was rescued unharmed after police quickly found the kidnappers’ abandoned car with her inside. But his father was taken deeper into the mountainous forest towards the border with Venezuela.Twelve days passed before he was released, with Diaz thousands of miles away but in touch with his family, who were updating him on the local authorities’ efforts to secure his safety. That moment came in a handover from the ELN (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional/National Liberation Army), a left-wing guerrilla group described as a terrorist organisation by Colombia, the United States and the United Nations.The family was finally re-united when Diaz returned to Colombia for an international team camp a few days later.