seem, I was relaxed and far from nervous. I didn’t feel the weight of responsibility upon me; that was the captain’s duty, not mine. I also knew that I would be sitting on the bench. And even the kick off time helped: I was used to playing at midday. It was a miracle to be there amongst the chosen ones but I was fairly relaxed and, believe it or not, I slept like a log. It was a reward for me to even be there, so there were no nerves and no anxiety to keep me awake. Nothing worried me.
I took my seat in the dugout and the fans gave me my first round of applause as an Atlético player. I felt like one of them, only I was wearing my kit. Another Atlético from the youth team, another kid coming through—just as Cubillo, López, Zagínos and Carlos Aguilera had done that very season. It sounded good to me. The fans had given me the thumbs up. In the meantime, the game went on around me: 0-0 at half-time. At the start of the second half, Cantarero sent me to warm up. As I ran along the touchline, the fans gave me another warm ovation, even bigger this time than before the match. As I stretched, Atléti piled forward but couldn’t get the goal. Ten minutes passed and the coach called me over; it was time to go on. But just as I was getting ready Luque scored to make it 1-0 and the coach changed his mind and sent me back along the touchline to continue the warm up.
As I headed along the touchline towards the south end, the fans were celebrating the goal but that didn’t stop one or two of them having a go at the coach for taking so long to send me on. A few minutes later—I’m not sure how many it actually was but it felt like an age—he called me over again. This time there was no turning back. This time I really was going on. I was about to make my bow as an Atlético Madrid player.
But there was no time for me to gaze around and think or for aimless daydreaming. I soon discovered that the pace and intensity of first team football was far greater than anything I had been used to with the youth team. I called for the ball, I showed for it, but my team mates didn’t find me. Not, that is, until Juan Gómez made a twenty yard run and played it in to me. It was my first touch. I didn’t get very involved in the game because I was an unknown, even for my own team mates. The two most significant moments were when I controlled the ball with my back to goal and won a free-kick, and a lob that went much higher than I had intended. Atlético won 1-0 but I have never really felt part of that victory. Maybe I hadn’t yet got it into my head that I was no longer just another fan.
I was included in the squad for the next match against Albacete six days later, too. It wasn’t a huge surprise. I half expected to be included in the trip to La Mancha in central Spain because the team had picked up a lot of cards against Leganés and there were a number of players suspended. And yet at the same time I half expected to be told I could go off on holiday and switch off, not worry about the first team. The match was another do or die encounter in the battle for promotion. Atlético had won three and drawn one since Cantarero had taken over and there were three weeks left until the end of the season. I started on the bench again and came on in place of Kiko.
Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, it is hugely disappointing that I never got the chance to actually play with my idol. I never set foot on the pitch at the same time as him and never played a single minute alongside him, although at least I can say I shared a dressing room with him and was his team-mate for a short period of time. When I went on there were seventeen minutes left and I was lucky enough to score in front of plenty of rojiblancos: the stands at the Carlos Belmonte stadium in Albacete were packed with Atléti fans. Ivan Amaya’s cross forced me to make a sideways run to throw off the defender and reach the ball. I headed it back across goal, past Valbuena, onto the post and into the net.
The victory gave us a genuine chance of promotion back to the first division with two weeks to go. We were fighting it out with Betis and Tenerife, whose coach was a certain Rafa Benítez. Everything changed for me with that goal. Suddenly, I was the star. I was surrounded by journalists and photographers. I felt like the lead role in a film until one of my team-mates, HernÁndez, rescued me from the pack. The atmosphere in the dressing room was fantastic and Kiko, who had been captain that day, came up to me and handed me the armband. ‘One day you’ll wear it on the pitch,’ he said. ‘Today, you’ve earned the right to wear it off the pitch.’ It’s a memento I will keep forever and one that takes pride of place in my house in Madrid.
A journalist once asked for an interview with me which involved taking photographs in the very centre of Madrid. Atlético Madrid’s press officer at the time said yes and called me over one day after training. ‘We’re going to do an interview and some photos in the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol,’ he told me. The Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol are two of the most emblematic, and busiest, squares in the heart of Madrid.
‘Are you mad?’ I asked. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he replied, ‘no one knows who you are.’
He wasn’t wrong. It was Christmas 2001, I was seventeen and had been in the Atlético first team for barely six months. I was virtually anonymous and we did the shoot alongside the stalls that set up for Christmas in the Plaza Mayor, under the famous clock in the Puerta del Sol and with my arms around the statue of the bear and the strawberry bush—the city’s emblem and the centrepiece of Atlético’s shield. We then rounded off the day with a squid sandwich, typical of the centre of old Madrid. And there hadn’t been the slightest hassle.
A goal against Deportivo de La Coruña and then another one against FC Barcelona changed my life. I went from being just another anonymous kid to being recognised by almost everyone.
Fame comes so quickly and there is nothing you can do about it. It creeps up on you and before you know it you’re engulfed by it; suddenly, you’re thrust into the public eye.
A year after that Christmas stroll round Madrid, my name crossed borders. In four matches, I went from a virtual unknown to a player people were talking about. The goal I put past Deportivo goalkeeper José Molina, having flicked the ball over the head of Nourredine Naybet, and another strike, this time against Barcelona, having cut inside Frank De Boer and beaten Roberto Bonano with the outside of my boot, made everyone sit up and take notice. The club had to put the brakes on. Between those two matches, we faced Real Madrid and the press department had over forty requests for interviews with me. I was no longer going step by step; now I seemed to be taking off. People started to recognise me and the pressure grew. It was more and more common for me to appear on the cover of the papers and doing normal things became more difficult. Just going to eat, to the cinema, a concert or even out for a coffee became a trial. Nothing would ever be the same again.
My independence had vanished. That became clear to me during the autumn of 2004. Just after the summer holidays, I got a letter telling me that Madrid’s waxwork museum was going to make a model of me. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to put me in there alongside other figures from Spanish sport. After the measurements were done, the model was finished in October and I went along to its unveiling. I was the first Atlético player to be immortalised there. Alongside ‘me’ were Zidane and Raúl as well as a number of other sportsmen and women, like Angel Nieto, thirteen times motorcycle world champion, Miguel Indurain, five-times winner of the Tour de France, Carlos Sainz, twice world rally champion, and Arantxa SÁnchez Vicario, one of the greatest Spanish tennis players ever. There I was, a waxwork in Atlético’s centenary kit with a ball in my right hand, signed by my team mates.
Two months later, a proposal arrived from the Madrid city council. I was asked to inaugurate the city’s Christmas celebrations from the balcony of the town hall in the Plaza de la Villa, accompanied by the mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón. It was my duty to turn on the lights and read the pregón— the announcement that officially opens the Christmas period.
I was becoming overrun by events,
