The beginning of the week has been very turbulent for the sports newsroom of the COPE chain after El Confidencial published that a member of the Tiempo de Juego team had allegedly deceived his teammates with a false cancer, in addition to having defrauded them of thousands of euros .
It was Guillermo Valadés, who faked a brain tumor so that Manolo Lama, Pepe Domingo Castaño and Paco González would pay for an experimental treatment. After the scandal formed, this Tuesday González, who is also a close friend of Valadés, wanted to give explanations live to his listeners before starting the broadcast of the game between Betis and Real Sociedad.
“They have to allow us a parenthesis,” Pablo González began by saying shortly before the aforementioned match between the two Spanish teams began. “Surely, many of you have read and seen a news item since last night in which COPE’s sports writing has become an indirect protagonistâ€, he continued.
“As it is personal and non-professional news, look for it on the Internet. But with the complicity that we feel with the listeners of Tiempo de Juego, that we feel as much more than listeners, in some cases friends, and with the commitment to sincerity that one has when standing in front of a microphone, something must be saidâ€. assured the announcer.
“We wish we could say something, but we can’t. We couldn’t say much because it’s something private and personal, very intimate, but in this case we can’t say anything because we don’t knowâ€, stressed the COPE journalist.
“If any listener says ‘I would like to know all about this, what has happened’; we would like to, we would love to. We would like to know the whole truth, but we don’t know it, so we can’t say anything, â€he insisted on this kind of explanation after the commotion caused by the alleged false cancer and fraud at the hands of his colleague and great friend Guillermo Valadés.
And he continued: “We can say a couple of things that sound contradictory: we are sorry and we would do it again. We feel the noise that is being forced and we would do it again because any help that is done from the heart is well done. In addition, he pointed out that some media “are publishing things that are absolutely inaccurate.”
As González well confirmed before the COPE microphones: “There is no working capital, no advertising fund; the sports writing has a fixed annual budget and we manage it to the best of our abilityâ€.
To finish, the well-known sports journalist settled the controversy with: “Sorry for the hassle and now we are going to start the trip, which sometimes leads us to have fun and other times to cry; and in general we want to inform and entertain, and then sometimes things happen in our lives and Playtime is life and things happen. When we can count more, we will.”
