Brave New World

by Guillem Balague

  Before the start of the following season, we organised a barbecue at the hotel where the coaching staff had been staying. Our guests were what we considered the captains and leaders of the team: Lallana, Kelvin Davis, Rickie Lambert and José Fonte, most of them accompanied by their wife and kids. Nicola, Toni, Miki and Jesús were there with their wives. After we had some food, the men went aside and the players told Lallana, out of the blue, that they wanted him to be the captain, that he honoured the armband, that he represented the essence of the team and the club. It was very emotional. He cried, and some of us too. There was a real connection at that point. He accepted, of course.

  *

  It is the international break. We’ve got 16 internationals, so we’ll have to make do with only six first-team players this week, including two goalkeepers. We will promote ten kids from the youth ranks. The pace in training will be dictated by the guys who have stayed behind. There is also the added distraction of the transfer market.

  Incidentally, before the Liverpool match, Georginio Wijnaldum told the press that he would have liked to have joined Tottenham. It must seem like clubs are stealing a march on us because we’re not up to the task, that we lose players for not being on the ball, but that’s not the case. If we’re interested in a player, we monitor and scout them. We need to improve the squad and take the team to the next level, but that would require bringing in the number ones in their position, not the number twos.

  I can’t stand the last few days of the window. I get fed up with the on-off, will-he, won’t-he nature of transfers. I’m going to go to Barcelona, as I’ve been doing for the last few years. By this stage, the end of August, I’ve made it perfectly clear what I think and what the team needs; my homework is done. The rest isn’t in my hands. And if we can’t sign anyone, well then so be it. So I prefer to go away.

  As I always try to do in late summer, I take some time off to be with family and friends. Generally I meet my friend Alejandro, the Argentinian consul of Barcelona, and his family. The destination is usually Ibiza, an ideal location if you’re in search of good weather and food. It is a sort of tradition, which I tend to stick to. I don’t like things done at the last minute.

  Daniel is looking to strengthen the squad. He feels he has to offer me something else. I think it’s a job he’s always enjoyed. Before, responsibility for signings was shared with the manager and the sporting director, or with the people who advised Daniel. Things have been clearer since I joined. We just need to get to know each other a bit better so the process becomes even smoother. Daniel is finalising the arrival of Moussa Sissoko, who had a great Euros, although he underwhelmed for Newcastle.

  The deal for Sissoko isn’t that expensive when compared to others, especially considering he’s played more than forty games a season for seven or eight years. It is not ideal arriving at a club when the season has started, without proper preparation. We know he will find it difficult to adapt to his new surroundings and to our philosophy. He felt the move was very attractive because of the appeal of the Champions League, getting to play alongside his international teammate Hugo Lloris, and because of our way of working and our style of football.

  *

  1 September. The transfer window has closed and Sissoko’s signing was confirmed late last night while I am spending my last hours in Ibiza.

  I think Daniel’s thought process was, ‘he’s a good player, but Mauricio will make him better’.

  We’ll see.

  3.

  SEPTEMBER

  The matches came thick and fast, and it was a matter of looking for the best way to bed in players who’d had varying levels of physical preparation. The team travelled to Stoke straight after the international break, before contesting league games against bottom-half opposition in the shape of Sunderland and Middlesbrough. League One outfit Gillingham were the first hurdle to overcome in the League Cup, while all eyes were focused on the Champions League opener against Monaco at Wembley.

  There’s a photo from when I was very young, I must’ve been two or three. I’m sitting in front of a shed that my father had built and the grass is very long. I have a tight grip on a football and am grinning from ear to ear. That’s me. That happy kid. I’m 44 now, but I still look at that photo every now and then, in order not to forget that that’s who I am, not only the person I see in the mirror today.

  As a boy, I used to say that I was born into a middle-class family. In reality, it was nothing of the sort. In Argentina, they call almost everyone middle class. I was working class, where Saturdays and Sundays don’t exist. If a pig or cow goes into labour, you have to see to them, whatever day of the week it is. My father used to work alone on 100 hectares of land, which back then produced enough for two or three families to live off, but now it barely feeds one person.

  It was a big house, although the sink and the bathroom were outside which was the norm back then. When it was cold, nobody wanted to move away from the fireplace. We had great times sitting in front of a 14-inch battery-powered TV. When my father arrived home in the evening on his tractor or some other machine, we’d take the battery out and stick it in the TV. We had to move the antenna on top of the box in order to pick up the only signal that reached Murphy. I was allowed to watch it for half an hour, which almost always meant a soap, and then it was bedtime.

  I remember playing football aged four or five in the fields. There were of course plenty of those around the house. I spent all day kicking a ball around waiting for my old man to come back from working the land. If it rained in the afternoon, it was brilliant, because nobody worked and everyone who was at home would play.

  Maybe because my life seemed far away from the places where things happened, when I was little I used to build up images in my head of future events. I don’t know if it’s natural or something I was taught, but I’ve done so ever since I can remember.I used to imagine whatever was needed at the time. A girl that I took a liking to, for example. I thought about what I had to do to win her over and it would then go just as I’d dreamt it. Others may call it intuition. Or even an aptitude for reading the future. I am sure it is not that, but I have great faith in this ability which I’ve always had and can’t fully explain. I use it to make decisions and understand our world.

  Also, I would sometimes hear a player’s name on the TV, such as Beckenbauer, and I’d store it in my head. I hadn’t the foggiest about his style of play, but I’d make it up and claim it as my own. The following day, while hitting the ball between the tractor’s wheels, I’d commentate, ‘And Beckenbauer shoots’ or ‘Beckenbauer goes for the header and . . . Gooooooal!’ That was difficult because I had to throw the ball up myself. I imagined playing in the biggest, most famous stadiums. Interestingly, however, I never visualised the fans in my head. Maybe that’s why I was never scared of the public. I was always able to block that out and I didn’t care about my surroundings, whether there were 100,000 people in attendance or there wasn’t a soul watching.

  I also believe nothing happens by chance, that there is a reason for everything. Since those early days I’ve had the ability to notice something powerful that you can’t see, but does exist. A vital force, an energy field that makes the world go round, an aura that accompanies people, which gives lots of information about them. It’s in my skin, I feel it. Karina and I call it ‘universal energy’. My wife helped me get to grips with it and gain a more in-depth understanding. Others helped me explore those feelings further. It isn’t superstition or black magic. I believe there is science behind it. It helps me break down day-to-day life, comprehend things, even possibly my own past.

  I come from a family of Italian immigrants hailing from Piedmont. My great-grandfather ran a bar that doubled as a grocery store. He cut an intimidating figure, commanding respect – especially when holding a knife, with which he was skilled – and laying down the law. He was called ‘the Sheriff’, without anyone knowing where it had come from, and he acted accordingly; he was the authority in the place
.

  My grandfather followed in his footsteps, and often got into trouble. I was around 14 and he was in his sixties on a day when there was a scuffle in a game that I was playing in at a local village. My father and grandfather both got involved in the punch-up and swung at anyone who got near them, knocking people down.

  I went to my grandfather’s house that evening to see how he was and he was laughing.

  ‘What did you do, Grandpa?’

  ‘Well, a guy was pissing me off and I knocked his block off.’

  That was my grandfather. I enjoyed listening to him tell stories about Murphy. People there weren’t scared of anything or anybody. I was living in Europe when I had to go back to Argentina to see him pass away. He no longer recognised me, but I was able to say goodbye.

  *

  My grandfather cut my father’s dreams short, as was often the case in Murphy. When he was little, Dad was a good footballer and received offers to play for local teams, although not on professional terms. My grandfather strictly forbade him. It couldn’t happen. My father was the eldest of many siblings and he had to follow in his dad’s path by taking charge of the land.

  My old man went to school until he was 12, after which he had to work day and night. There was barely any space for fun, such as going to the cinema or playing, unless he ran off for a bit, of course. On one of those escapades he met my mother, who was from a nearby town, and he married her at 19. She was two years younger.

  Just like my grandmother, my mum commanded respect. They both ran their households. When my children have a fight with their mother nowadays, they say, ‘Shut your mouth!’ Imagine saying something like that to your mother back then! You’d get slapped so hard that your head would fall off. I don’t remember the last slap, but I did get a fair few before moving to Rosario when I was 14. My parents showed me exactly where the limits were, but I still took it upon myself to be a bit naughty. I would sometimes get found out and receive what was the universal punishment back then. In any case, my father was my idol and I was always following him around. There were things that really got to him, such as when his children showed one another a lack of respect – he had a way of instilling values that have stayed deeply rooted within me.

  My father helped me become a footballer. Without his support, I would never have achieved it. Maybe if my grandfather hadn’t banned him from playing, Dad might have reacted differently. He stopped working to take me to training and to matches, and he’d sometimes give me a lift to Rosario. He made sacrifices in order to give me a chance.

  If he hadn’t let me move to Rosario on my own, I wouldn’t have made it as a professional. Back then, it was very common for Argentinian players to move far away from home to try to achieve success. However, letting your offspring take off can create a gap between parents and children, years pass, a decade or more, and we end up becoming different people – still relatives but strangers too. That’s the price to pay for being who I am today. As is often the case, my parents found it difficult to keep pace with my developments. After a while it becomes difficult to relate to them.

  When I was already settled in Rosario, we would speak on the phone only on Saturdays, just for a bit, meaning there was no way to explain the daily routine, the emotions, the experiences and the ways in which I was becoming a new person. So there comes a time when your parents become strangers. Or, more accurately, we become strangers to them. Distance turns into intolerance. When you’re young, the energy which makes you achieve greatness can also trigger pain, haughtiness, an inability to understand your elders.

  Time goes by and you can’t retrieve the past. Your relationship with your parents is like one of those thick cables made up of thinner ones that make it almost indestructible. If the thin ones start breaking, though, it gets weaker and is difficult to repair. Impossible sometimes. Yes, I’m their son, but I’m also a famous person who has created a life which they aren’t part of. I think they find it hard to separate the son from the celebrity.

  Nowadays I don’t know how to build the bridge that will bring me closer to my father once again. I find it hard to talk about this, it causes me great pain because that distance has almost become a rupture, and I feel responsible.

  Nor do I have the close relationship that I’d like to have with my two brothers. In fact, it’s the worst relationship imaginable. I have more emotional links to friends and acquaintances than I do with my brothers. Is that my fault? How does one get into that position? They are valid questions because I don’t want it to happen to my kids. I tell them that they can fall out with one other when there’s a conflict of interests, but they must never lose respect for one another.

  Another thing that worries me is that passing on values to our kids often depends on where we are in our own journey through life. Six or seven years ago, when Sebastiano was 15, I was in another world. I was completely different from whom I am today. I understood life in a different light, my levels of patience weren’t the same and I communicated in a particular way . . . My relationship with Mauri, his younger brother, is entirely different. We’re very close, but, now that I have changed, now that I am different from the person I was six or seven years ago, have I managed to instil in both the same values?

  Just like all parents, we demand so much from ourselves. Perhaps too much. And we don’t always get it right.

  I have to call my folks.

  *

  One day I almost died in the flat in Rosario where I was living. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

  I spent my first year at Newell’s in digs near the stadium. My father then bought me a small one-bedroom flat. I trained in the mornings and went to school in the evenings from seven until 11. I then took the number 15 bus back to the flat. There was a bar opposite the stop and, as its kitchen was shut, the owners would make me some sandwiches, I’d grab a bottle of water or a Coca-Cola and walk home.

  I would switch on my black and white 14-inch Noblex TV, the same as the battery-powered one that we had in the countryside, although in Rosario there were two channels. It was pretty chilly in the flat in winter. I’d shut the door to the rather minuscule kitchen, the bathroom door and the dining-room door before going to my bedroom. I’d take my TV with me and watch it for a while until I fell asleep. My father had always told me to switch off the mobile gas heater before going to bed in order not to use up all the oxygen and I always did, but it was bloody freezing that night and I thought, ‘I’ll lie down for a bit and watch some TV, I’ll leave the heater on for another half an hour to heat the room up and then I’ll switch it off.’ I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, I was dripping with sweat, I couldn’t breathe. I instinctively switched the heater off. There was a window near by which I opened and stuck my head out of. I was out of it. Getting some fresh air kind of woke me up and so I opened all the other windows before going back to my room. I didn’t know if it was my head or my body that hurt, nor what I was doing or where I was. I got into bed completely soaked.

  I woke up in the morning cold to my marrow. It was freezing! I closed everything and had a shower. I was hurting everywhere, even the nail on my big toe. I went to see a doctor who checked out my temperature, throat, head . . . ‘Go home, get into bed and stay there for a week,’ he said. I didn’t go out for three or four days. I just ate rice and eggs, as that was all I had. I didn’t have a phone or anything like that. On the fourth or fifth day I went to the club. My father didn’t know anything when he came to visit me the following weekend. The flat was in a real state. I even had pans of old food under the bed! I was 15 and he couldn’t believe what had happened. I got a bollocking. He chucked it all away and bought me an oil-filled electric radiator instead.

  It’s incredible the way things happen. Someone up there was looking after me and gave me a nudge, ‘Get up and open the window.’ Why else did I wake up?

  *

  Do you need to experience great suffering to be a footballer?

  There are many ways to become a
professional. In life suffering does not equal reward. It takes a mix of effort, desire, passion and responsibility to achieve your objectives, and not exclusively in football. If my son wants to be a footballer, he doesn’t necessarily have to go through what I went through. That’s what I’m fighting for. To be a footballer, you have to feel it. It has to be very deep down. I always had the need to become one, although I don’t really know why. My brother also liked playing football and my father gave him the same chance as me, but he didn’t grab it because he didn’t feel it on the inside. If my son doesn’t have that feeling, he won’t be a footballer, whether he lives in digs from fourteen or not.

  The day after accepting the Tottenham job, we had a meeting with Southampton, whom 12-year-old Mauri played for. The coaches wanted him to stay and offered him a contract. Of course, he was over the moon and didn’t want to come to London with us. What should we do? Split the family in half or allow him to stay behind? After analysing it over several weeks, we decided that we’d buy the house where we were living in Southampton and I’d stay in a hotel near the Tottenham training ground, while regularly travelling down south to be with the family. After the first few drives, I realised it wouldn’t work, it was all too much effort. I told Mauri that if he was going to be a footballer, he could do so anywhere. We ended up not buying the house and he accompanied us to London.

  If 16-year-old Mauri comes up to me now and says he’s off to Málaga and that he has the maturity and ability to do it, I’ll give my seal of approval. Back then, however, he was too young. But, do you need to leave and distance yourself from the family to fulfil your dreams? I don’t think so. In fact, if I were the one to suggest that he suffers as much as I did, he’d certainly resent me for it. You can’t ask a teenager from the first world to suffer these days.