team players to be given the time to play and settle in. The best thing for clubs to do is sign key players for the first team and use the kids coming through to help make up the squad. The truth is, though, that clubs tend to turn to home grown talents in times of need and pressure, when things are going badly. It would be better to turn to youth team players when things are going well and give them the chance to settle in but that is rare. If things are going well, there is little need to call up a youth teamer. If Atlético Madrid hadn’t been in the second division, I am sure it would have taken longer for me to get a chance.
There are some very talented kids coming through in England, although I think they would be more successful with a strong reserve league. At Liverpool we have two perfect examples: Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher have progressed all the way through the club and played for the English national side. There are others too: Wayne Rooney, who started at Everton, Giggs and Beckham at Manchester United and John Terry at Chelsea. The biggest clubs are investing more and more in their academies because they know that there is one thing money can’t buy: the spirit and commitment of those players who have been at the club ever since they were kids.
It all happened in a flash, so fast I hardly noticed. I had made my professional debut. My first minutes as an Atlético Madrid player shot by on a warm spring morning in May. At the age of seventeen years, two months and seven days, my dream became a reality.
Almost seven years after that trial at Parque de las Cruces, I took my first steps as a player at the Vicente Calderón, running on to play the final 26 minutes of Atlético versus Leganés in the Second Division—the division we had been relegated to the previous summer and the division we were trying to escape in the final, frantic weeks of the 2000-01 season.
After the emotion of pulling on that red and white shirt with the No. 35 on the back, I showered, put my Atlético tracksuit back on and gave my first ever press conference in the press room under the stand at the Calderón. My head still in the clouds, I left the stadium. Alone, I strolled out of gate 6 and looked around for my dad standing amongst the fans who always waited by the players’ entrance. It was about 3pm and my stomach was rumbling: I was starving. A few metres away, my parents and my brother and sister were waiting for me by the car. Together we went to eat at a restaurant in a shopping centre in the south of the city, not far from Fuenlabrada where we lived. A family lunch full of hope—what better way to celebrate my debut? I look back on it now and I see myself eating, relaxed, still wearing my Atlético tracksuit. I had just walked away from the Calderón having played my first ever game but I remember the tranquillity, the calmness of it all.
No one recognised me. I wasn’t the fans’ favourite; I was just another anonymous kid from the youth team hoping that one day I could make it at Atlético.
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon: phone on silent, a siesta and an evening stroll with the same kids from the neighbourhood as always. The same park, the same people, and the same scenery brought me back down to earth. I had been floating since I had taken a call from Paulo Futre; the Portuguese playmaker, who’d been at Porto, Atlético Madrid, Benfica and Milan, had been our sporting director for the previous six months. It was his job to get us back into the First Division. Futre, who spoke a mix of Portuguese and Spanish every bit as quick as he had been on the pitch, phoned me one Monday to explain what the club’s plans were for the 2002-03 season. Promotion was on the horizon and Paulo explained that on Wednesday he wanted me to start training with the first team to gain experience for the future. He also wanted me to join the first team for pre-season training during the summer and then return to the B team to play in Spain’s Second Division B.
At first I wasn’t keen on the idea. I had gone three successive summers without a break and I was already looking forward to the following week, when I was due to go to Galicia and spend a few days with my grandparents and then head to the beach
with my friends. The day after the conversation with Paulo, the first team had the day off and I was unable to relax. Eventually, the time passed and the big day arrived.
My dad accompanied me to Atlético’s training ground in Majadahonda, fifteen kilometres north-west of Madrid—not least because I wasn’t yet old enough to drive. I was nervous as I headed towards the first team dressing room, going down the stairs with my head bowed and in silence. It was still early but it was already hot. Just as I was about to go into the dressing room I saw Fernando, a goalkeeper from the same youth team as me. He had been called up to join in the session led by Carlos García Cantarero, the coach who had been in charge of the first team for the previous four weeks. Having seen ‘Ferdy’, I felt a little more relaxed as we walked slowly, cautiously, into that dressing room. Ramón, one of the kit men, was there to greet us. ‘Come on, lads,’ he said, ‘this is Atléti!’ We didn’t know what to do or where to go, so he showed us where to change and gave us the kit. There was still an hour to go before the session started.
I began my first-ever training session with the Atlético first team nervously and barely said a word. We were preparing for the weekend’s game against Leganés and as I looked around I saw Kiko Narváez, my boyhood idol and the man I had always tried to emulate, and a host of other familiar faces: Toni Muñoz, Juanma López, Santi Denia, and Roberto Fresnedoso, all of whom had been part of the double winning side, and Carlos Aguilera, one of the club’s historic greats. I glanced nervously at them all. The coach welcomed me and so did the club captains, Muñoz, López and Kiko. Then I trained, a novice determined to take my chance. Once it was over and I was back in the dressing room, I felt more relaxed. It helped that José Juan Luque, Iván Amaya and Sergio Sanchez—who, like me, were represented by Bahía Internacional—never left me alone for a second. They kept an eye out for me and the jokes flying round helped me to settle too. Then came the good news when Cantarero said: ‘Come back tomorrow.’
Things moved so fast that I hardly had time to do anything, not even to think about what was happening. I hadn’t stopped since Spain had won the Under-16 European Championships in England. The week after that, Iñaki Sáez called me up to the Spanish Under 19s to play against Portugal for the second leg following a 1-1 draw in the first match. I scored and so did Oscar González, who currently plays for
Olympiakos in Greece, and we won 2-0. We travelled back to Spain but I hardly had time to unpack before I was off again, this time to Seville with the Atlético youth team for the Copa de España. And that was immediately followed by the call from Futre…All that in barely two weeks. And then my name was on the list for the first-team squad; two amazing weeks might even end with me playing at the Vicente Calderón.
After four training sessions, García Cantarero included me in the squad to face Leganés. When the final session finished Antonio Llarandi, one of the kit men, asked me if I wanted a lift home with him as we both lived in Fuenlabrada, which really helped. It made it easier for me when it came to joining up with the rest of the squad in our pre match hotel and of course it allowed my dad to have a day off from driving me everywhere. And so I arrived at the Calderón with Antonio, from where the team bus took us to the city centre hotel where we spent the night—the night before my debut.
My mind went back a fortnight to when the Atlético fans had paid homage to Sergio Torres and me for having been part of the Spain squad that became European Under-16 champions in Sheffield. We had been invited to take the honorary kick off at the Calderón for Atléti’s match with Sevilla before watching the game from the stands. That was only recently but already it felt like it belonged to the past. My debut with the first team was drawing closer.
Atlético’s club delegate Carlos Peña put me in a room with David Cubillo, another youth teamer making his way. ‘Cubi’ had made his debut that season in the first few months of the campaign. He was the perfect room-mate:
