Helping others

Growing up in a sporting environment was very important for me.

My brother Rafinha and I were fortunate to discover sports through my mother, who played volleyball, and my father, Mazinho. With him still playing professionally, we came into contact with what it meant to be a football player.

We were lucky enough to witness training sessions, step into dressing rooms and become familiar with the everyday life of a footballer. At that time, my curiosity wasn’t yet focused on tactics, but instead on the player’s behaviour and daily routine.

Going into a dressing room from a young age helped dispel some of the myths of what goes on inside football. You see that there are situations and human relationships. Obviously, the players from my father’s era were not the same as today’s players. And as a child you don’t engage in conversations in the same way as you do when you are a teenager or an adult, when you interact with teammates and coaches. But being exposed to those environments helped me feel comfortable in that context, and later on to know how to stand up for myself.

I was also fortunate to grow up with a brother very close to me in age, who loved football too. We were super-competitive with each other in a healthy way. We competed by playing. We didn’t talk about football and didn’t evaluate how we had played. We just played.

We weren’t much for talking, more for observing and doing. Paying close attention to everything around us is what made us grow in our particular context – a mindset any child could carry into other areas of life. That was how I was brought up, in a setting that gave me the space to develop the way I did.

“Football is the only sport where you can win while playing bad”

With our Brazilian roots, playing futsal gave us much greater agility with the ball. It made us think quickly and react very fast to actions. Futsal also involves a significant tactical rigour that you can apply to football.

Sometimes, on the pitch, I found myself in situations where important coaches said: “Don’t step on the ball!”

Okay, well, I am going to step on it.

“Don’t do this dummy because of this and that. Don’t control it with the outside of your foot!”

Right, well, I am going to do it.

It is all part of the nature and the magic of a sport where you can win even when you play bad. Football is the only sport where you can win while playing bad. It is the magic of the unthinkable – in football, anything can happen.

My first coach, my father, was an invisible coach. He coached me and my brother without having to say much, simply through his own actions. That was the number one factor for me and my brother eventually becoming players. Later, as you grow, you have coaches who have an impact on your development as a footballer, like Francisco J García Pimienta during my time at Barça. In Vigo, when my father played for Celta, I was also trained to develop for the more physical side of football.

Then, coming into La Masia gave me the tools I needed to understand how Barça football works and how they want the game to be played. But the most important thing is that they provide you, individually, with human values. Barça helps you. The discipline they foster in their football teams makes you develop discipline in your daily life. In that sense, La Masia and its players go hand in hand. The players are made by and for Barça’s first team.

“The moment you get the chance to hurt the opposition, you have to seize it”

It was something unique to be in the Barcelona first-team dressing room and play important matches. To be part of a group in which, when I closed my eyes during a possession game, the ball sounded perfect.

Players who make it to that level have always desired to be the best in their field. But in that Barcelona side I found a team where the best – maybe the best ever – were already in those positions. So your goals in that group shifted a bit, because the ceiling was just too high to reach right away. You transform as a player and you learn a lot. If you eventually leave the club, you are already well ahead of the rest of the players you will then encounter. It was a pleasure and a unique experience to play for Barça with midfielders like Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta.

The German league showed me that, in football, you can’t always be the dominant side. Sometimes you have to understand that, more often than not, you won’t control everything that happens. And that is fine, as long as you are really good at what you master. German football gives you that. It is an attacking, transition-based game in which you sometimes have to accept that you can’t completely protect yourself. But the moment you get the chance to hurt the opposition, you have to seize it.

When I arrived in Germany, Bayern Munich were still very dominant in the Bundesliga. It was a league that hadn’t yet been fully explored and I saw that opponents had blind spots.  We could dominate with the ball and if we moved it faster we could cut transitions more easily. Little by little, with the emergence of a very talented generation of German coaches, the Bundesliga’s tactical side sharpened and began to match the football we were playing at Bayern. I encourage young players to develop in the Bundesliga because it gives them the chance to experience every phase of the game.

My time at Liverpool encompassed everything I look for in a club and everything I’d always loved. The feeling of competing for every trophy, of being dominant on the pitch, yet giving off that sense of being a fighting club where every day you have to battle for a goal. It wasn’t that we fell short of anything in particular, you just had to really work for it. At Liverpool I found that blend of being and feeling dominant, while also working hard to make it happen.

“I was fortunate to be with a manager capable of adapting every possible situation to the team’s favour”

English football teaches you that you have to be better than the player in front of you in one-on-one duels. That gives you that edge to grow week after week. Barça and Bayern have different approaches. Barcelona always has that beautiful style of play. On the other hand, nothing compares to Bayern in German football, as they are very dominant in their league. The intensity of English football makes it closer to the football played in South America. At Liverpool we went through a very nice period of adaptation, learning and growth. 

It was where I worked with Jürgen Klopp – someone who exudes energy on a daily basis. I was fortunate to be with a manager capable of adapting every possible situation to the team’s favour. We are talking about good situations and not-so-good ones. With Klopp, there are no bad situations; just moments that need to be channelled in a way that makes them favourable to your team. And he achieved this through energy, calmness, or even laughter at moments that aren’t expected to be funny. He managed to instil that flow of energy, that direction, so everyone followed him.

Apart from the intensity of the training sessions, the best thing I could pass on from Jürgen to my team is the idea that, even if you only want to focus on working on a specific move, the play never stops – it stays alive. You can’t run a finishing drill without having an extra ball in case of a rebound, a loss of possession, or if you need to make a transition. What I took from Jürgen is the intensity that derives from running, passing and being well positioned.

Concepts very similar to those of Hansi Flick. Hansi is my reference as a coach, because he is the person in whom I have found that human touch, as well as the more technical side. At the end of the day, a coach deals with people and athletes. You have to be able to understand players, but at the same time give them the tools to develop and continue growing – to fuel that hunger in young or driven people, so that the group continues to work well.

With Flick, you learn to give your all and not to pay attention to many things that happen around you – as is the case in a club like Barcelona – because that would drain energy from the group. For him, the most important thing is to control everything that happens inside, so that what goes on outside does not affect it.

I could make a long list of all the coaches who have been beneficial throughout my life: Pep Guardiola, Hansi Flick, Luis Enrique, Carlo Ancelotti, Jürgen Klopp, Jupp Heynckes. I felt the benefit particularly towards the end of my playing days. I don’t know if it was because Jürgen had seen my grey hairs, or because we used part of the time we had on the pitch to talk and lead, but it was Jürgen who told me I was going to be a coach.

“The hardest step was accepting that it was coming to an end”

When you reach a certain age and begin to notice recurring patterns in a match, you start using them to take shortcuts to create overloads and advantages in the game. What happens on the pitch isn’t about the individual; it is about the team. You give the younger players input so they can feel comfortable doing things their own way. You provide them with more tools than they already have. That is how the curiosity for coaching grows. While still a player, you ask yourself: “How can I help my teammates and other athletes?” Even if, at the time, you don’t label these moments or new attitude as coaching.

Little by little, that coaching side becomes part of your habits. “Okay, I need to perform at my best in this training session, in this match, but I also have time and want to help someone else, a teammate, to do the same.” It grows over time. Gradually, when the footballer fades, you start thinking about how to continue using that knowledge of the game with other people. That is the natural transition that some of us go through. 

The experience you gain during your career as a player gives you knowledge through trial and error. You learn what works for you and what benefits the team, but it is not the same formula for everyone. In that case, the most important thing is psychological – understanding what works best for that person, or group of people, and creating harmony.

After such a long struggle to become a footballer – then to become the footballer I wanted to be – the hardest step was accepting that it was coming to an end. It wasn’t difficult because of what would come next, but because I had to let go of something I was in love with, due to circumstances beyond my control. It was difficult, but I had to find that peace with myself, that acceptance and pride for the career I had.

Once your sporting career is over, you need to slow down. Slowing down gives you the perspective to review everything you have done. It means being at peace with yourself and bringing together everything you have done so that you can move forward. This does not mean that you have to carry with you, for the rest of your life, a backpack you have been filling up over the years. You simply have to pick up that backpack, open it and see what is inside. And the journey will continue with the things you want to put in it. To continue learning and evolving, sometimes you have to move at a different pace and take a different direction.

Just under a year ago, Jordi Alba, Oscar Pierre [co-founder and CEO of Spanish tech company Glovo] and I decided to try to help Centre de Deportes L’Hospitalet, a club in Catalonia, by creating a football team that the three of us would love to be part of. Through a historic club like Hospitalet, we are achieving that sense of growth, combining what they have always been, with what we hope a football club will be.

Something magical is happening. We are seeing a community fully engaged in a 6,000-seat stadium, eager to watch the team in higher divisions. We also want to bring quality and learning to their youth academy. In today’s football, there is often a focus on financial gains. In this case, we want to explore the social aspect to create a positive impact within the city, involving the people who live there.

“I can direct my talent towards making a real difference in the lives of other athletes”

In addition, my family founded the Alcántara Family Foundation in 2019, to use sport as a means of social inclusion and assistance. It has been a wonderful, transformative experience. Throughout our lives, we had already done things on our own, inspired by our parents, but we decided to bring everything together so that we could start our own projects and also help others. Now we are helping other projects to develop through sport.

What I hear most often from professionals in different sports is that you need to have time and freedom before you can devote yourself – body and soul – to what you want to do. I believe that there are no such things as half-measures, as not getting involved. You have to devote part of your life to the task or mission you have been given. But you have to give yourself time before you can devote yourself fully to it. 

My experience as part of Barça's coaching staff in the summer of 2024 was wonderful. It came at a point when the game was still fresh in my mind and my legs, but I couldn’t compete at the highest level anymore. I knew that the child inside me – the one who made me play football – had faded away. In order to help other people, my adult self had to contribute with knowledge. I used it to provide a clear idea of how to play, a philosophy and a group behaviour. I am very proud of that spell we had in 2024. Above all, I am proud of what the whole group achieved last season and what they are doing now.

I am working on my coaching, and am passionate about understanding and learning from other areas relating to performance. For example, talking with physiotherapists or fitness trainers about what they do. 

If I progress as a coach, it is because my talent perhaps wasn’t meant only to be a football player, but also to help others. I am very didactic; I want to help a lot, and can direct my talent towards making a real difference in the lives of other athletes.

The ball will always be present in my life; it will just be different now. It is about giving that ball a place within a football team or within football in general. I have fulfilled the dream I had all my life, which was to be a football player, but my other dream continues. I want to help people.