sortiwa
[ad_1]
“It’s a strange feeling,” Lucas Vázquez says. “We’re used to competing, training, travelling, being together every day: 30 people, all the time. And then, overnight, you’re on your own.” On 12 March the Real Madrid basketball player Trey Thompkins tested positive for Covid-19. The football team had just turned up, but they did not head on to the field that morning. Instead, the club’s Valdebebas HQ was closed and they were sent home.
Seven weeks later, they are still there. Like everyone in Spain, they are in lockdown and Vázquez’s hair is longer than it has been for ages. For weeks no one has been out except to walk the dog. “By the third day the dog’s saying: ‘I need a day off,’” the Madrid winger says with a laugh. Next came the kids, released last weekend. And finally, this weekend, adults will get out. It is only an hour but it is something. Testing of players begins this week, a gradual return to training the week after. That, at least, is the plan.
“Good news,” Lucas says. “Bit by bit, numbers drop, and there’s hope we can get back to normal.” Until then there are home sessions – “Madrid send daily routines so the loss of group sessions has as little an impact as possible” – books on nutrition, series on TV, and above all “my son, who won’t leave me alone: I’m enjoying that part of it.” There are also English classes.
“I have a basis already and I watch series in English, read a bit, study grammar. I’ve been doing it for a year and a half,” he says. Good enough to have this conversation? “If you want my answers to be ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” he says with a laugh, which he does often. An entertaining, unexpectedly relaxed hour flies by, looking back on a journey from a tiny town to the biggest club on earth and three European Cups. “Never in my wildest dreams; looking back, it doesn’t seem possible.”
He is the most successful person to have come out of Curtis, that is for sure. Wikipedia’s entry on the little Galician town lists two illustrious inhabitants, one of which is San Pedro de Mezonzo, and that was 1,000 years ago. Vázquez cracks up again. “There’s a couple of people who’ve done well, but I don’t think there’s anyone with three Champions Leagues. There are 2,000 people and everyone knows everyone else, the typical small town with farms and things.” And a restaurant opened by his grandparents and run by his dad’s twin brother. There’s another grin, another giggle. “The best restaurant in Spain, basically.”
A Real Madrid fan but a season ticket holder at Riazor where he watched Deportivo La Coruña – “[Juan Carlos] Valerón, [Diego] Tristán, Víctor Sánchez, Fran, Sergio González, who was my manager at Espanyol, Djalminha, [Roy] Makaay – it was a joy watching them.” He is, he concedes, a typical Galician. Up there, people arefamously inscrutable. “It’s hard for us to give a clear answer and I’m shy. At 15 the change from a town of 2,000 to a city of four million was huge. There were good moments and, I’m not going to lie, bad moments. You have to be tough, find your own path and believe. But I’d do it all again with my eyes closed.”
Dani Carvajal, Nacho and Casemiro remain from those early days. Álvaro Morata was there, too. There was also a certain Liverpool midfielder. Vázquez laughs. “Fabinho came as a right-back. IHe played the whole season there. At first he found it hard to adapt, but he was a very good player. You could see he had things.”
So did Vázquez. “There are few players who play on their natural foot as a winger,” he says, “so you could call me a pure or classic winger, I suppose.” Like a throwback, something from the 70s or 80s? “Well,” he says, with a grin, “I like this football. The pitches are better, for a start. You don’t see those mud baths any more.” Quite English, then? Might that suit? Might the timing, even? Aged 28, he has 18 months left on his contract. So what next? “The dream is to retire at Madrid but in football you don’t know. When I was little, I always watched the Premier League with my brother. It was, it is, very attractive: a nice football to play, one that could fit my characteristics and personality well.”
The personality, especially. With Vázquez, it always feels like that defines him, a player as much about temperament as talent, a career built on conviction as well as quality: quietly determined and hard-working, never a word out of line. Quite Galician, although Santi Solari once observed: “Lucas has the virtues I most appreciate in the Spanish character: solidarity and bravery.” As for Zinedine Zidane, he turns to Vázquez again and again. “He’s transparent: good or bad, he tells you to your face, always,” Vázquez says.
“Saying something into a microphone doesn’t gain you anything, but that doesn’t mean I won’t turn up the next day and say: ‘Hey, I want to play.’ And the mental side of the game is so important. People sometimes complain and it can feel like they think we want to lose. We’re not machines where one plus one is always two. At 22, 23, if I played badly, I’d be pissed off for a day, two days. But over the years you learn. It doesn’t help to constantly think about it. You have to know what you did wrong, sure, but ask yourself: why? Improve it, move on. You have to live with pressure.”
Pressure? If there is an image of Vázquez, repeated often, it is the moment he walked to the penalty spot at the end of the Champions League final against Atlético Madrid in 2016 spinning the ball on his finger as if he did not have a care in the world. “Tell the truth, I wasn’t crapping myself, because I didn’t really know what was at stake. People ask me why I wanted to take the penalty. I was convinced I would score and I thought: ‘Why not?’ On the walk from the centre, I was thinking: ‘Put it in, put it in, put it in.’”
Did you know which way you would shoot? “Not entirely. I like to wait …”
You depend on the goalkeeper moving? “Yeah, a bit.”
And if he doesn’t? Vázquez laughs again. “Hit it hard and hope it goes in.”
It did. It still seems impossible, he says. “Three Champions Leagues, a league title. Unbelievable. And I’d love to do it again.”
There is this season first, though, the need to come back in La Liga and the Champions League. If they go ahead, that is. If not, Vázquez says, sorting everything out will be a follón, a mess. “Above all, you have to be responsible. If we can play, with the right safety measures, we’d all love to complete the season. It would be good for people, for society: for two hours you’re not just thinking only about this [virus]. Football brings happiness.”
Even behind closed doors? Even if it has to be at the training ground instead of the Bernabéu? “Well, the pitch is the same size so we needn’t go mad [over that]. I’ve played behind closed doors and it was strange. Being able to communicate, hearing everything, is odd. If the manager is on one wing and I’m on the other, he’s got to express with gestures or I haven’t got a clue.” He cracks up again. “You can always blame the noise when you don’t do what he says. Just not if it’s empty.”
Either way, the impact is likely to be huge. Real Madrid’s players took a 20% pay cut, protecting the salaries of other employees. Does Vázquez fear for football’s future? “I really hope not. Football has such a huge place in society; there will be an impact for sure but I hope the impact is minimal.
“With us, Sergio [Ramos] is the captain. First, they speak to him. He brings it to us. We had a meeting, spoke, evaluated it, discussed what was best for everyone. At no point was there the slightest doubt about what we had to do. Madrid is a big club with lots of employees, like a family, and it was important to pull in the same direction. We did what we thought was right. We didn’t hesitate. Now we just want to play, if we can. We’re waiting on the government in the hope that we can start again.”
[ad_2]
Source link
