Brave New World

by Guillem Balague

  I will always be grateful to him for placing his confidence in a person who had played for Espanyol for many years and knew the club inside out, but who had never coached before. I became the third manager of the season, taking over a team languishing towards the bottom of the table, five points from safety. It was a difficult dressing room to be entering, as it was the end of an era and nobody had dared to carry out the necessary overhaul. I knew what I had to do.

  What I lacked in experience, I made up for with clear thinking.

  From the first day, my backroom staff and I would arrive early at the training ground, which we gradually transformed. We’d drink mate, discuss things and have a natter. I listened to what everyone had to say and then made decisions based on a combination of intuition and reflection. I haven’t changed all that much – though perhaps my team talks have improved. We used to do a few strange things; we even tried hypnosis!

  After drawing with Guardiola’s Barcelona in the Copa del Rey, we also shared the spoils with Valladolid in our first league match. Our director of football, Paco Herrera, resigned, and Ramón Planes – who had been the technical secretary – replaced him, provisionally until the end of the season. That’s what he was told, that his position would be reviewed at a later stage. Everything was up in the air. We were tipped for relegation to the second division.

  People bad-mouthed Ramón to me, and also vice versa. That’s typical in football and naturally it led to an almost irreparable rift. I kept my distance from Ramón, but we continued working together. I left the door open. I observed him. We got to know each other. The quality of his work and his perseverance, courage and high principles spoke volumes. Ramón and I had more in common than I had first thought, and we joined forces to get the club to where it belonged during complicated times, of which we would endure many. We knew that we had to overhaul things and we were committed to putting our faith in youth. Soon after, he was the one who brought in Jesús – whom, in my need for a fresh boost, I eventually made one of my right-hand men.

  But first, before any big plans, we had to survive that season.

  The team bought into our ideas from day one. We felt we had to be proactive, take to the pitch with confidence and play at a high tempo. To be bold. And if someone, anyone, wasn’t on board, then that was fine – someone else would play in their place.

  ‘Now we’re definitely staying up,’ I told Ramón after beating Barcelona in the Camp Nou. We always took the game to them in the derbies and we earned points that cost Barça league titles.

  As the season was progressing, we had to cope with tension; the atmosphere was incredibly intense. The stress was tough, but it had its good side too. Winning a game with Espanyol, hard as it was, always brought a huge feeling of happiness: that is how we felt when we got up, when we read the paper, when we went for a walk. It was pure joy, albeit fleeting.

  We fell eight points adrift of safety at one stage, but we took 32 points from 19 games to seal survival with two match days to go. Job done: the club was going to begin life in the new stadium in the top flight. With a bunch of naive idealists in charge.

  Moving to the new Cornellà-El Prat meant the end of an exile in Montjuïc that had begun with the demolition of the club’s iconic Sarrià Stadium in September 1997. I still remember the Saturday when the two main stands were knocked down; a very sad day. We lived five minutes away and that night I went with my wife and my son Sebastiano to look at the ruins. We asked the security guard to let us in. It was impossible to hold back the tears as we walked towards the middle of the pitch. We felt like we were witnessing Sarrià’s death throes, the energy of the place slowly fading away.

  I literally dreamt of being in charge for the opening game at the Cornellà-El Prat Stadium. And luckily that dream came true. We brought over Rafa Benítez’s Liverpool on 2 August 2009. A crowd of 40,000 turned out for the occasion.

  And something odd happened. A bird, a chick, flew into the stadium – it was either green or white, I don’t remember which. I picked it up, then let it go, and it flew off. I’d also seen that in my dreams.

  We won 3–0.

  And six days later, at the height of pre-season, Dani Jarque died.

  It’s very hard to explain. There are situations that you have to deal with, but you can’t help but wonder why you have to go through them. And why something like that happens to such a young, healthy kid.

  I remember every detail of that Saturday morning. We’d trained at the Italian Football Federation’s headquarters in Coverciano, Florence, and he’d seemed perfectly normal. We were preparing for a game the following day in Bologna. After lunch, I told the players to have a nap if they wanted to, and then to go for a wander round Florence. Dani walked by me and said to the doctor, who was sitting opposite me, ‘Doctor, can you give me an aspirin or a paracetamol? I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

  I chimed in: ‘If you head into Florence, have a coffee and it’ll go away.’ He replied that he preferred to stay in and rest because he was tired.

  Those were the last words I ever heard him say.

  Later, I was in a square in Florence with Feliciano Di Blasi, my assistant, when I got a call from Iván De la Peña, our best player. He was crying and asked me to go back to the hotel because something had happened to Dani. When we got there, there were doctors in his bedroom trying to revive him. They tried for three hours, but he never responded. He’d had a heart attack. At the age of 26. It was harrowing – a trauma, a collective trauma. While the doctors were doing their job, the players were crowded around, sprawled on the floor, crying, clutching their heads, distraught . . . I felt powerless as I looked on and realised that he was leaving us, this kid that I loved, who was part of my life, to whom I had just given the captaincy, who reminded me so much of myself . . . and there was nothing I could do. He had gone. I was devastated.

  The silence on the flight back from Florence that same day tore me apart. It was deafening.

  We had to keep going, though, and to protect the group and rally around them. We had to channel everyone’s energies towards recovering and building up confidence. To use the pain as a driving force. Every glance, every word and every gesture took on new significance.

  We suffered a few defeats and struggled to get into our groove. Dani’s girlfriend, Jessica, was pregnant when he died and gave birth to their daughter, Martina, on 23 September. That very same day we secured our first competitive win at the new stadium. We dedicated the victory to them.

  *

  That summer we had begun the required shake-up of the squad. We gave a number of academy lads a chance, like Kiko Casilla, now at Real Madrid, who had been wasting away in the third division with Cadiz, where he was on loan. And Víctor Ruiz, today at Villarreal. He was at centre-back when we lost 4–0 at home to Racing Santander and he had a torrid time. After training the following Monday, I told him: ‘Hey, you’ve got to play without fear, go out there and take no prisoners.’ Our next game was against Barcelona and there was no doubt in my mind: Víctor had to play. In the event, we almost claimed a point, but Xavi dived to win a penalty, from which they won it.

  The signing of Dani Osvaldo in the January window that second season (2009–10) is perhaps the best example of how we operated. We weren’t scoring goals and we had no money, but we were offered the option to sign ‘Chupete’ Suazo, who came recommended by Bielsa and had been a leading scorer in both Chile and Mexico, where he had amassed incredible stats. Ramón and I spent hours mulling it over. Everyone saw it as a no-brainer – except us. ‘What happened to that kid [Osvaldo] we saw two years ago at the Toulon Tournament, the Argentinian who was an Italy Under-20 international?’ I asked. Ramón told me that he’d scored three goals in two years and was hardly playing. But he couldn’t have forgotten how to play football at the age of twenty-two. We watched him again. I told Ramón, ‘I really like this bastard. Shall we sign him and see what happens? If it goes wrong, they’ll slaughter us.’ We already had Raúl Tamudo, a club
legend, in that position, but we showed our balls by signing Osvaldo. During his first training session, Ramón and I looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve screwed up, he’s washed-up, he’s an ex-footballer.’ But we whipped him into shape. In his first five games, he scored just once. But he ended up becoming Espanyol’s record sale: we signed him for €4 million and sold him for €17m. Just a year and a half later.

  We watched hundreds of academy matches, we handed debuts to more than 20 kids, many of whom are established professionals today: Jordi Amat, Víctor Ruiz, Dídac Vilà, Javi Márquez, Álvaro Vázquez, Javi López, Raúl Rodríguez . . . But perhaps the thing that most helped me grow as a coach, and so quickly, was my showdown with Tamudo: an iconic figure, one of the best players in the club’s history and their all-time top scorer, who was nearing the end of his career when I took over.

  I had to grapple with a situation from which other, much more experienced coaches had shied away. Nobody had dared to open that can of worms. I knew what I had to do, though, and I cut straight to the chase. When what I’m doing is right and truthful, I don’t give a damn about any other considerations. I tackled it head-on.

  I didn’t want to mistreat a cult hero, but the steps I took were necessary. In any case I couldn’t afford for them to backfire because I was a rookie and the club’s position was on the line. Although we’d survived the previous season, our limited budget made it hard for us to emerge from the lower reaches of the table.

  Raúl was my friend, we’d shared happy moments in the dressing room, including when we won the two Copa del Rey titles, but sometimes players put their personal interests before the collective good. I had several conversations with him to try to make him see that he wasn’t behaving appropriately, that something else was expected from a leader, legend and veteran like him, and that he’d probably reproach himself for it in the future. He’d been in the first team for 13 years and he’d almost certainly suffered due to the responsibility and weight on his shoulders, but that didn’t entitle him to forget about the group.

  When that season began, the memory of Dani Jarque was in the foreground, but attention shifted to Tamudo, who was gradually phased out of the squad. When I was asked about it, I said that he wasn’t fit to play. In the end, he only played 376 minutes all season, featuring in six of the 38 league games and starting just four. In the other two, he came on with half an hour to go.

  Raúl didn’t understand or rather did not want to, which of course only complicated matters.

  I remember seeing him in tears when I hung up my boots. Just a few years later, we were arguing and saying hurtful things to one another. There were clear-the-air talks, but when something is broken, it’s broken. I’m sure that we both could have done more to avoid a lot of what went on – especially as it was painful not just for us, but for those around us too.

  I can only imagine that he matured as a result of what happened to us. I’m sure I made mistakes in how I handled it; over time you learn and improve. Now, after ten years as a coach, I wouldn’t go rampaging into battle like the bare-chested, lance-wielding Mel Gibson in Braveheart. You’ve got to be able to calm things down.

  These days we’re not on speaking terms. Many people contributed to that state of affairs; the environment at Espanyol is such that, when something is wrong, it is invariably made worse. But I’m at peace with it, because every decision I made was justifiable: there were very solid grounds for each of them

  Nowadays he’s part of the club’s backroom staff and I’m sure that, from that different vantage point, he’ll have realised that you have to take many things into account when you make decisions. And he’ll probably disapprove of players who behave the way he did, and if he does encounter something similar, he’ll make choices to ensure a good atmosphere among the group. To do so, you need to have real conviction and discipline, and know what values you want to instil.

  Anyway, the fact is that, during what were lean times for Espanyol, I kept the club well clear of trouble for three seasons – we even flirted with Europe – and surpassed 150 matches in charge. But the dream ended in November 2012.

  Or was it already over before then?

  The summer between my penultimate and last seasons had been really challenging; the club had a lot of financial problems, so we couldn’t sign anyone and had to sell. There was a moment when I thought to myself, ‘What’s the point of carrying on when it means sinking further into the mire?’ At that time, I got an offer from Sampdoria, who had just been promoted to the Italian top flight. They were willing to trigger my release clause and pay me double what I earned at Espanyol. I was about to embark on my fifth season at the club. All summer, we were in two minds about what to do. I heard myself tell Ramón, ‘No, let’s stay and, bloody hell, let’s fight!’ Karina told me she couldn’t stand seeing me so exhausted, urging me to quit. We couldn’t go on like that, she said.

  In the end, I told them, ‘I’m leaving.’ The Sampdoria owner agreed to come over and finalise everything the following day.

  But when I got up that morning, I called the Italians’ sporting director and told him that they shouldn’t come because I was staying. I’d analysed everything and could see the disaster looming at Espanyol, but my pride continued to make me think that we could turn it around. There was no money, but we would be creative. My romanticism got the better of me; it had taken over my mind and no one could talk me round.

  My family are Espanyol fans and that’ll never change. But we ended up losing any romantic notions about the club. You get disillusioned when you see that your vision, football as a vehicle for ideas and values, isn’t shared by the rest – that your plan to lay down deep roots won’t come to fruition. I suddenly realised that it was not possible, that no such thing exists. It’s so difficult to keep business and emotions separate! There are genuine people for whom the club is part of their DNA. But then there are others who use football to make money or serve their own interests. That’s enough to kill dreams – that, and the sole pursuit of results. Are results really all that matter?

  As early as pre-season on the 2012–13 term, I saw things I didn’t like. We lost matches and lacked drive. There was also a cumulative sense of tiredness, both on my part and among those around me. When a coach makes decisions, some people benefit, but others lose out. When you’re in a position of responsibility, you can never make everyone happy. There were a few unhappy people. People needed a new face.

  The club told me I couldn’t leave until the assembly of delegate members had been held to elect the new president. Joan Collet, a powerful figure within the existing structure who was running on a continuity platform, was the favourite and any changes in the dugout risked ruining his campaign. But we were all utterly exhausted. I asked Collet to let me leave. ‘Please, let me go,’ I said. He said no. One day, two or three weeks before the assembly, I reiterated my plea at my home, in front of Karina: ‘Joan, please, if you win the elections, let me leave the next day.’ He agreed. ‘Joan, I’ve got this year and one more left on my contract,’ I went on. ‘I’ll waive the second year’s salary, but you have to pay off my staff, because this has nothing to do with them.’ It wasn’t too much to ask, even considering the financial difficulties that were hobbling the club. For example, Miki, my close friend and assistant, was on less than €45,000 a year before tax. Collet accepted.

  That is how it finished. It would take a lifetime at another club to go through what we experienced at Espanyol. I feel there was a balance between what I got from the club and what I gave. We’re even. I feel very grateful to the club and the people around it. It’s thanks to them that I was able to move to Barcelona and to experience some great moments as a player and coach.

  Ramón Planes says that I was a samurai in another life. I think he’s referring to the fact that I have values, I’m a fighter and I forge ahead without fear, especially when the going gets tough. And that I’m loyal to and honest with my people, and willing to kill for them. Just like my grea
t-grandfather and my grandfather, although with no knife.

  I don’t know what I make of that. But I’m proud that someone I worked so closely with, and alongside whom I went through so much at Espanyol, pictures me that way.

  *

  14 September 2016. We lost to Monaco in front of 85,011 fans, a record attendance for an English club in the Champions League. Deservedly. 2–1 at home.

  Worse still: we let ourselves down badly.

  In my first Champions League match. Our first Champions League match.

  *

  Tonight my family and I left Wembley at 11.20, after having something to eat in the Manager’s Room. We listened to music in the car; none of us spoke a word. We’d said everything there was to say. When we got home, we went to bed. I put some Spanish radio on and listened to a bit of everything, switching between stations and shows: Hora 25 to COPE, ONDA CERO, El Larguero . . .

  As usual, I have my iPad in bed, so before calling it a night, the day warrants one final reflection.

  I’m angry. It was a historic night. How often do you get 90,000 fans cheering you on like that? Then there’s the Champions League music . . . If that doesn’t spur you on . . .

  We lost because of a failure to show passion and excitement at playing in the Champions League. It’s not that we’re not capable in footballing terms, that we don’t have the requisite quality. We weren’t up for the game mentally. That’s what rankles with me.

  As the boss, I have to take responsibility and question a whole load of things. What’s difficult is what Messi does: to pick up the ball, dribble past five opponents and score a goal. But it should never be difficult to run and be aggressive, to remain vigilant and positionally disciplined, because all that is motivated by desire. Sometimes things don’t pan out the way you’ve planned, but you should never hide. At no point did we display the attitude that’s required in these sorts of matches.