A positive message

Just after we got promoted to the Primera División with Leganés, all my previous experiences flashed through my mind. It’s funny, because I would say that they went by like a slideshow. 

I started coaching very early, at the age of 21. It was 2006, and I was in charge of nine and 10-year-old kids in my home city, Ávila. When I took that first step, I didn’t do it with the desire to say: “I’m going to do this professionally.” I did it because my passion for football led me to want to become a coach. Teaching – I have a degree in education – led me to start with young children. 

Then I spent several years in youth football. First, with the Milan Academy Avila – AC Milan has a school there – and then with the Under-12 Ávila province team and the Real Ávila cadets. I combined the latter with the position of assistant coach in the first team. 

In 2013, at the age 28, I took charge of Real Ávila, already at a semi-professional level in the Tercera División. And it went really well: we finished fourth and reached the playoffs to decide promotion to Segunda B. That is when I realised that the reality of football is often not how you imagine it, but how you live it. 

After leaving Real Ávila, it seemed that my options as a head coach had gone. I didn’t receive any offers, so I decided to focus my future on the family business and finished my training for it. 

Then something happened that I couldn’t have imagined, but which changed everything. It was a call from Cata (José Antonio Prieto) and Braulio Vázquez, who were in charge of the academy and the sports department at Real Valladolid. 

"missing out on promotion in the last minutes of the season was one of the hardest moments of my career"

“We want you to coach the cadet team,” they told me. “And also to join us in the sporting direction, to watch players for recruitment.”

It was a decisive moment for me, because I couldn’t continue working in the family business and coach the cadet team in the afternoons. The distance between Ávila and Valladolid did not allow me to do so. 

The decision I took was to give myself a season to see what would happen. A year to pursue my dream of coaching. 

So yes, all of that came to my mind after getting promotion with Leganés. I thought of what happened after I made the decision to leave my job, take the risk and choose to go down this path.

It was a lot! The year in Segunda B with the Real Valladolid Promesas team, the season with Izarra, Rápido de Bouzas – the club that changed my life, because there I met Álex Martínez, who has been with me ever since as assistant coach – and the promotions to Segunda División with both Mirandés and Cartagena. In between those two I had the adventure of six months managing Asteras in the Greek Super League. A different kind of football in a different country gave me even more experience. 

And, of course, I thought of my time managing Deportivo de La Coruña – an unforgettable experience I will always carry with me, no matter how bitter the end was. Missing out on promotion to Segunda in the last minutes of the 2021/22 season was one of the hardest moments of my career. It doesn’t tarnish everything I lived and learned there, though. 

"i couldn't make sense of what had happened, and in the dressing room there was a lot of grief"

All those moments, both good and bad, have made me grow as a coach. I have no doubts about that. Nor do I doubt that I have to lean on and find help from people outside the context of football in order to be better. 

Without that help, I would probably have approached the game through which we won promotion to Primera differently. Very differently. I would even say negatively, because of everything that happened in the previous game against Racing Ferrol (below). There, we had promotion in our hands, but with a few minutes to go the referee gave Racing a penalty. They scored, and the game ended 2-2. 

The first few minutes after the referee blew the final whistle were very difficult. I couldn’t make sense of what had happened. And in the dressing room there was a lot of grief – the feeling that we had lost promotion. A whole year of work had been compromised by the referee’s decision, which I didn’t agree with. 

Fortunately, I had Rodri, one of the people who helps me with communication, very close to me in those first difficult minutes. He made me see that the real goal was still there to be reached – just in another seven days. 

He told me that we hadn’t lost promotion. In fact, we were even closer to it, because that weekend’s results had taken us three points clear of third-placed Eibar. Moreover, our final-day opponents, Elche, came into the game with nothing to play for.

The first interview I did on television, I used as an opportunity to convey precisely that message to people. Rodri knew how to make me see how to approach that moment. Nothing about the referee, nor about a missed opportunity. “We are closer than we were before the penultimate fixture to being able to achieve it,” I said. 

A positive message. 

"we made the players see what had happened was going to bring us closer to achieving our dream"

But there was still the second part: a whole week of work to prepare for the last match. I tried to work on my mind a lot. For that I had the help of my personal coach, who gave me the tools to know how to handle myself in this kind of situation. 

I tried to balance my mind, because during the rest of the day I had to be confident about what we were going to achieve. I had to show confidence and be self-assured in front of everyone, even if internally I had fears that I could not externalise to the players during that week. 

Despite that sense of isolation that a coach can often feel, I did perceive from the first training session that the team had understood the positive message. They were sure that we were going to win promotion. 

All of the messages during that week were given with that direction, regardless of the fact that we might have doubts or fears about what might happen at the end of it.

But the intention throughout the week was for each player to arrive very firmly convinced that the  message had to be one of courage. To go out to win. A draw was enough for us, but at no time did we want to speculate on the result. Playing for a draw throughout a whole game, and above all in the final minutes, would have made us very nervous. 

We were consistent with the players, talking to them one by one. There were no starters or substitutes. We made them all see that what had happened was going to bring us closer to achieving our dream, which we had been fighting for the previous 42 weeks. 

"you work every day with 30 different personalities. we are in the middle, managing that"

The truth is that it was a very emotional week because of the mental aspect. That struggle also against your own head, of wanting to be more positive than usual. With hindsight, I think I managed it quite well. 

For me, it is very important that my mental aspect is aligned to being able to constantly show calmness. I work with my personal coach on the preparation of the pre-match talks: where to focus them, and where to focus on an emotional level in order to touch the players’ feelings.

I need to work on my mental aspect in order to be balanced, so that I can then transmit this balance to all the players. You can’t forget that you work every day with 30 different personalities and that we, the coaches, are in the middle, managing that.

Through the whole week before the game, we sent out a positive message. In the moments before the game, though, we just tried to be calm and lower the players’ intensity. Then, once the game started, we could do all the things we had worked on. Keeping a very compact mid-block without dropping off the line too much, and being able to make good transitions.

And it was thanks to transitional situations we had worked on during the week that we scored the goals in the first half. Miguel de la Fuente, our striker, put us ahead after an individual duel against the centre-backs. The second goal was on a breakaway from our own half, to attack on the outside, with Miguel playing it centrally for Juan Cruz’s great finish. 

At half-time, and with the score at 2-0, we continued to convey calmness to the group. “There are 45 very tough minutes left, but the most important thing is that nothing happens at the restart,” I told the players. It was clear to me that, if we reached the last 20 minutes with that lead, Elche would fade a bit because they didn’t have anything at stake. 

"i could say that i have achieved my great goal, and that would be a perfect ending – but it would also be a lie"

So we tried to manage the second half at a tactical level, introducing some changes to the team in order to have freshness at all times. We needed legs until the end, because it was very clear to me that until the referee blew the whistle, everything was a long way off.

I remember the first moment of celebrating the promotion with Álex. The hug we gave each other took me back to all the joys we had experienced together. Remembering everything we have built with him fills me with happiness; he is an excellent person and deserves this success. 

I also remember the tears of Jesús Rueda, who joined my staff in 2023 and who has improved our momentum. I also remember celebrating with Rodri, who seven days before helped me to build the positive message that was so vital to transmit. 

Finally, I won’t forget that collective hug I had with my immediate family right after the match. We were all crying together with happiness. They suffer with every difficult moment I experience, and they deserved to enjoy something like that. 

I tried to take promotion to the top division as naturally as possible, without knowing the consequences of achieving it. But then, as time went by and I looked back on all the moments since I started, I realised the magnitude of what was achieved. 

I could end by saying that, at 39 years of age, I have achieved my great goal: to coach in the first division. And that would be a perfect ending to this story, no doubt – but it would also be a lie.

Why? Because for me it’s unrealistic to set that kind of goal. You can’t think that your goal is to one day coach in the first division, and so I never did.

But if you fight hard and show resilience in the most difficult moments, you will be closer to achieving it.