Never too late

Will it ever be my turn?

That’s the question I used to ask myself whenever I saw a coach winning a title. Like Félix Sánchez, for example, when he won the 2019 Asian Cup with Qatar. I was very happy for him, because we have a good relationship, but I must admit I was a little envious of what he had achieved. It is the same when you watch Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and other managers lifting trophies on television.

Well, at the age of 62, my turn finally came.

It’s incredible to be, and to feel like, an Asian Cup champion.

And it’s never too late if you believe it’s possible. For me, it’s a lot like when you go fishing. I say that because I’ve been a big fan of fishing since I was a kid. I did it with my father, and now I still do it with my friends. To go fishing, you have to get up very early, go out to sea, and there you wait and wait until something bites the hook.

A lot of the time, most of the time, you don’t catch anything. Or if you do, it’s nothing interesting; just small fish.

That’s why I say that coaching is similar. You have to put in a lot of dedication, have a lot of patience, and wait for the results to come. On many occasions, as when you fish, even with all that, results don’t arrive. That’s when the bad moments kick in.

“All that was missing at espanyol was the final step: to coach the first team. And that came too”

I went through a very, very tough time at Espanyol. I played there for several seasons in the 1980s. That meant that I became a very well-known person at the club and, more importantly for me, very much loved by the fans.

When I finished my playing career, I started coaching. I joined the Espanyol academy in 1998, and went on to perform well in all categories, as well as getting titles. I went from coaching the 14 and 15-year-olds to the second team, with whom I worked between 2002 and 2004.

My career at Espanyol was always step by step, but on the ascendancy.

I moved up to the Espanyol first team in 2004, to be assistant to Miguel Ángel Lotina. We won the Copa del Rey in 2006, and then I worked alongside Ernesto Valverde, who took the team to the final of the UEFA Cup – now the Europa League – in 2007. We lost that final against Sevilla on penalties, after the match had ended 2-2, but that doesn’t tarnish the great work Ernesto did with the team.

I had completed all of the steps at Espanyol. All that was missing was the final one, to coach the first team. And that came too.

“We are going to trust in you after all the work you have done over the years at the club,” I was told in the summer of 2008 from the top, from the board of directors. The ‘years’ they referred to were six as a player and 10 as a coach. By that point, I had spent almost half of my life at Espanyol.

“I went back to barcelona, where people kept asking me questions. i felt suffocated”

We started the season in the best possible way. Two victories in the first two games, and we were top of the table. “Watch out, though, this doesn’t mean much,” I said in the press conference after winning that second game, 1-0 against Recreativo de Huelva. I could have sold our first place better, because it’s not something normal for Espanyol to be first in La Liga, even at the start of the season. But I knew it was only the beginning, and in football things can change from one day to the next. As they did.

On matchday 13, I was sacked. We had been at the top, then in the European places, but four defeats in a row took us down the table. However, when you have so few games under your belt, the points gap between teams is still small; bad results can move you up or down very quickly. Espanyol’s management didn’t have that vision, however. They lacked patience. Unfortunately, this is something that is very common in football.

It was horrible, really. Leaving Espanyol in that way left me devastated. That was only compounded by another very bad experience during my brief spell at Castellón the following season. I went there, with the team in the second division, and I could only stay for half a season. Two clubs as head coach, and two dismissals.

I went back to Barcelona, where people kept asking me questions. Everywhere I went, or even in the street, Espanyol fans recognised me. “How are you?” they asked. “What happened? Why so little patience?” I know they did it because they were fond of me, but I felt suffocated. I had worked so hard to get the chance to coach at the elite level, and it had all gone wrong.

At some point, I just couldn’t take it any more. I made a decision. “I’m leaving,” I told my family. “I can’t live here, because I feel like I am drowning.” I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed in Barcelona, but I suspect that things would have got worse.

So I went as far away as I could: to Qatar. I came here in 2011 for something very different from what I was used to. I didn’t come to be in charge of a club. Instead, I arrived through the Aspire Football Dreams project, which brought a lot of African players to Qatar to develop them. From there, they then acquired a team to compete in Belgium: KAS Eupen. That was my journey: from Qatar to training in Belgium.

“It is not easy to build a national team to compete at the highest level with so few players”

It was really interesting, because they were top-level players. However, the climate in Belgium was very hard for me. It was too cold, and there was too much rain. Three years there was more than enough.

In 2018, I returned to Qatar, after a short stint as sporting director with the Iraq national team and also a few games back in Belgium, in charge at Sint-Truiden. There, I was reminded again that the Belgian climate was not for me. This time, a Qatari club called me: Al-Wakrah Sport Club. They were then in the second division. I was one of the first foreign coaches who came to work here, at a time when the country was starting to step up its preparations for the 2022 World Cup.

I have seen, at first hand, the evolution of Qatar in terms of football. The facilities they have built are incredible. So is the Aspire Academy. But it is not easy to build a national team that can compete at the highest level with so few players. Qatar is a country of three million people, only 400,000 of whom are Qataris. And more than half of the Qataris are children and women. So you have a very small number of players to choose from.

Félix Sánchez (above) did an incredible job, not just in winning the 2019 Asian Cup. He built a national team culture. So did Carlos Queiroz, who arrived after the 2022 World Cup. The same also happened at club level. Al-Wakrah is an example of that evolution.

I was very happy with my work at the club when, in early December 2023, the federation contacted me. Queiroz had left the national team. “We need you to come and help us for this short spell,” they said. It wasn’t just any short period, though, but one of the most important. One month later, the Asian Cup was kicking off in Qatar.

I arrived on the first day and spoke to the players, many of whom I knew from the league. “We are going to play what I know,” I told them. “High-press football, dominating possession and showing a lot of sacrifice in defence.”

“You might have caught many a big fish, but every time you go out to sea it is like starting from scratch”

They were the basic principles I wanted to start with. We prepared the team on that basis and then, as the tournament progressed, we introduced a few more things to compete. But in such a short time, and with qualification for the knockout stages at stake in every game, the most important thing was to win. At the end of the day, that’s what football is all about.

The knockout rounds were really tough. We suffered a lot despite beating Palestine 2-1 in the round of 16. And then even more so in our quarter final against Uzbekistan, which went all the way to penalties. In the semis we beat Iran, one of the strongest teams, 3-2. Then, in the final, we beat Jordan, the surprise package of the tournament, 3-1. It was also a very difficult match, and with the added pressure of playing for the title at home.

I came to the national team in December 2023, and two months later we were Asian champions. And let me put into context just how difficult it is to win the Asian Cup with Qatar. As I said before, you have to choose from a very small pool of players, and we are competing against giants like Australia, China, Japan and Iran.

For the sake of illustration, it’s like Luxembourg winning a European Championship. And Qatar has now done it twice in a row, in 2019 and 2024.

This time, I’m the one in the photos and on TV, lifting a trophy (above). A great trophy. I would like my story to be useful to all coaches who, like me, are fighting to win at least one title in their career. Many times it never seems to come, but you can’t give up. It’s a question of keeping going and going.

At 62, I’m lucky to say that football has given me back everything I have given. And it has also opened a new window for me: the next objective is to take the national team to the 2026 World Cup.

I came to the Qatar national team for a short period, and now I have an exciting project ahead of me. But I take it with my feet on the ground. The setbacks that life and fishing have given me have helped me in this. You might have caught many a big fish before, but every time you go out to sea it’s like starting from scratch.

It’s the same in football.

You have to put in a lot of dedication, show a lot of patience, and wait for the results to come again.

But it’s never too late to coach at a World Cup, is it?