La força d’un sentiment is the slogan that Espanyol uses to define its idiosyncrasy and since this Tuesday it is the main argument to avoid relegation, that message embodied in the new tenant of the bench, Luis GarcÃa, idol of Spanishism after his time as player between 2005 and 2011. The Asturian, flanked at the beginning of his presentation by Mao Ye and Domingo Catoira, conveyed confidence in each of his words and radiated enthusiasm with his smile from ear to ear. “I’m like a child on Three Kings Day,” he acknowledged. The club’s CEO was in charge of remembering that the coach is from the “perica” ​​family, but the sports director qualified that his signing is not only due to an emotional aspect, but also to his “training and determination” shown in his beginnings in the band with the Juvenil de la Damm and this season with RSC Internacional, Real Madrid’s third team.
The lively gatherings at the Juan Segura Palomares Auditorium awaiting the arrival of the new coach contrasted with the silence that preceded the farewell ceremony for Diego MartÃnez. From the sad epilogue of a failed project, there was an expectation for the signing of a technician who is valued at first, above all, his parakeet past beyond his pedigree. He could have refused, confident that an option would appear in another, more opportune situation, with more experience behind him, but the man from Oviedo did not hesitate at the possibility of returning to his “home”. “At the moment they called me I had no doubts,” he explained, although assuring that he “would have loved Diego MartÃnez to continue and the team was phenomenal.” That affection towards the blue and white entity was shown with Rafa Marañón, also an icon of Espanyol, whom he hugged up to three times when he received a book with the history of the club, a usual regulation for newcomers.
That conviction could have been a facade, going the procession inside before facing the “most important challenge” of his life, with the team in relegation with 11 games to go. However, the bottle next to the microphone, the one for which he pays the water brand to appear in the camera shot, confirmed that he is not bluffing. The nerves and the string of messages that he launched would have dried out anyone’s mouth, but a simple drink was enough for GarcÃa before the appearance to answer the twenty questions from the journalists.
“If I gave up my principles, I would betray myself. I know the situation we are in and some things have to be simplified. There is no time. An elite coach tries to adapt those ingredients to what he likes. I’m happy with what I have,” declared the author of the phrase “the best of Barcelona is to be from Espanyol”, pronounced, between tears, the day of his farewell as a parakeet player.
Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid, was the first proper name he pronounced, to whom he thanked for having made it easier for him to leave the white club. It was in ChamartÃn where he forged his character as a fighter, of “fighting until the end”, the same one that he wants to transmit to a squad with a “great work culture”, as he sensed in his first contact with the players in his first training session this Tuesday. . “You have to be calm. I have seen a committed dressing room and with contained anger because things have not turned out. They want revenge. They are top-level footballers. The player must be responsible for the situation but must flow and float on the pitch. You have to be brave,” he said.
Faced with a scenario that was so expected and at the same time so complex, so tense as well, the normal thing would have been to lose the thread of speech, stammer in search of the right word and pull from some cliché, something so recurrent in football. Luis GarcÃa, on the other hand, seems to have arrived with the lesson learned, at least off the pitch. “The most important thing is to have clear ideas and I have them tremendously clear,” he insisted.
His demeanor and his oratory suggest that he is convinced of the path to take on this thorny path in the final stretch of the season. Now all that remains is for him to convey it to the players and one of his arguments will be his own experiences in football, that of a career that he has spent “on the wire”. “I’ve only experienced one relegation in Murcia. We saved ourselves with Mallorca on the last day and at the last minute here. In Zaragoza we saved ourselves with a lower score than Espanyol. In Belgium we scored four goals in 20 minutes so as not to be relegated” He recalled his experiences to the limit.
The coach’s formula to avoid relegation will be to show “personality” on the field, that “rivals don’t want to play against Espanyol.” For the offensive plot he wants “verticality”, if he can “attack in three passes” better than in “ten”, and in the defensive line he wants “warriors”. This will be the equation that he will try to capture on the field in his debut with Athletic on Saturday, in an RCDE Stadium overturned with the Asturian. “Thank the entire club for betting on me to lead these 11 games and if God wants what comes,” said Luis GarcÃa, with a contract until 2024, at a press conference that ended with a round of applause and hugs among those present. in the front row. The results, however, will mark whether this idyllic start continues on the pitch.