Twelve in the morning. The remains of a wedding are dissolved in the Civil Registry of Pradillo street. An older man starts his Mercedes and after a few meters stops in a large lot in front of the headquarters of EL MUNDO. Deluded of me I turn to this God in life and I tell him when I understand what he is going to do. “Federico, enter the newspaper in the bathrooms on the first floor.”

-I thank you, but I have always pissed in the street, in the field.

After a brief greeting, I say goodbye to the anarchist, chaotic cyclist, to the person with a good and bad temper, to be above and to be below. Capable of having a cognac with Agua del Carmen in the middle of the Tour and of winning and losing races with his lack of method.

Historians say that he began riding his bike in Toledo to evade surveillance and be able to buy and sell food on the black market after the war.. The Civil Guard never caught him, but he did have a serious problem on one occasion. After a tip off, civilians were chasing him and he had to take refuge under a bridge where he stayed for a long time. The humidity and the bugs caused him a typhus that almost took him ahead.

In those years, he stole vegetables by jumping with some colleagues into a truck that stopped when it reached a bridge, a moment that was used by the kids to jump into the back of the vehicle and throw all the vegetables and fruit that were collected by the cronies.. He collected remains of bombs (pure anarchy) and metals from the Civil War in Toledo and worked unloading trucks for subsistence wages, what there was after the war.

His chaos led him to win or wait for his rivals while taking the famous ice cream. A marketing genius, a science that had not yet been born. He faced whoever was necessary, even if it was Luis Puig, his director, whom he sent to the club.

I came across it over the years several times. One of them in the presentation of a Vuelta a España. He was over 90 years old and ate like the kid who stole vegetables in Toledo. In Toledo there was no God. It was the Holy Trinity.

The last time I had the opportunity to greet him was in a town in Toledo on the birthday of a candy magnate who gathered dozens of people in a zoo full of dead animals.. surreal afternoon. I was like a rose.

But age is like a port that never ends and crushes you as you climb. A domestic accident and a broken toe, aggravated by osteoporosis, a disease that few men suffer from, made a mess of him in his last years in his rural retreat in Valladolid.

Bahamontes was the victorious anarchy on the highway. His personal life was also complicated and his beloved Fermina, who ran the bike shop in Toledo, forgave him for his escapades. He recognized two twin daughters born out of wedlock.

Fermina was always accompanied in her last years by the anarchist cyclist capable of the best and the worst. The Tour, always the Tour, awarded him in 2013 with the distinction of best climber, a trophy that takes him to the highest point in history.

His triumphs were many, but perhaps the greatest was, in addition to being a great cyclist, being a free man and continuing to pee, discreetly, on a plot of land on Pradillo street, in front of EL MUNDO or going down the Galibier.

It is enough to go back to last summer to verify the substantial change of Carlos Alcaraz. If then he had already become one of the great protagonists of the circuit, an agitator wherever his racket rested, now, just over three weeks after conquering Wimbledon passing over Novak Djokovic, we are facing a player who sports an aura almost invincible. In 2022, after losing to Jannik Sinner on London grass, he decided to play two consecutive tournaments on clay, losing consecutively against Lorenzo Musetti and Sinner again in finals in Hamburg and Umag.. Already in the Canadian Masters 1000, which was then played in Montreal, he fell from the start against Tommy Paul, after letting a match point pass, and stayed in the Cincinnati quarterfinals, against Cameron Norrie. A little later he would give the big blow by winning the United States Open and becoming the youngest number 1 in history.

More refined his calendar, Alcaraz has not played any official match since his triumph at Wimbledon. Yes, he was seen in the Hopman Cup, an exhibition tournament, to play two singles and a doubles match. The Spaniard reappears this Wednesday in Toronto and plans to play next week in Cincinnati the second Masters 1000 of the North American tour, which will close from the 28th with the title defense at Flushing Meadows. Winner last year in Miami and Madrid, and this year in Indian Wells and again in the tournament that takes place in the Caja Mágica, he will seek his fifth title in a tournament of this category, also the fifth overall of the season .

430 points advantage

Absent Djokovic, who will only be shot in Cincinnati for the US Open, Alcaraz has the possibility of widening the gap with him in the ranking. Despite having a total of 450 points deducted from the tournaments in Hamburg and Umag, he has 430 points more than Nole, 9,225 to 8,795, and could be sure to make it to the top in New York if he wins the title on Sunday.

On this tour he only defends 10 points in Canada and 180 in Ohio. The Balkan, however, starts from scratch in the two tournaments that he will play in the United States, since in 2022 he did not play them due to his refusal to get vaccinated against covid and, although he does not depend on himself, he would have options to surpass him if he is champion in Cincinnati.

Exempt in the first round, Alcaraz will debut against the winner of the match between Ben Shelton and Bernabé Zapata, which is played today. In the event of victory, and always in the field of hypothesis, he could meet Holger Rune in the quarterfinals, whom he defeated in the Wimbledon quarterfinals, and a hypothetical semifinal against Sinner, the tennis player who has proven capable of creating more difficulties for him.. They have met six times, with three wins each. The last duel, in the semifinals in Miami, was won by the Italian.

A soccer team has 3,285 days to turn a child into a professional player. From 10 to 19 years old, more or less, this is the estimate of those responsible for the quarries in Spain. Nine years in which the majority of adolescents end up falling by the wayside, change course, find other motivation, see that they are unable to reach the sporting elite and focus on their studies.. So few that every detail is key to its development. Every week, every minute they spend in the sports city is taken into account to maximize their potential as much as possible. “The club revolutionized the universe of transfers with a different scouting system that created a school and currently the key lies in innovation and technological development,” he adds.

In the José Ramón Cisneros Palacios Sports City one finds some of the most promising youngsters in national football. 321 players followed and analyzed down to the smallest detail. 100 GPS devices that are distributed according to the training schedules of each category, 1 video system to record the main course sessions, 10 portable recording systems so as not to lose attention to the exercises that take place in all fields.. “It was difficult for us to adapt to technology”, they admit to the Sevillian team, but nothing is understood without it anymore. “We record training sessions and matches and transform the data into analysis to create our own metrics and report the performance of each player.”

One questionnaire, 25,000 responses

But, what data can be collected and analyzed from a player, for example, 13 years old? The answer: everything. We changed to Sevilla, a European team, for Racing de Santander, for example, a historic player in the Second Division, and we found the same depth in the statistics. “We analyze all the training sessions and give a score to all the variables. From the fry to the juvenile. All the injuries, physical data, statistics of each training session, nutritional values, type of exercise…”, lists Álex Fernández, one of the managers of the Cantabrian team's youth system, to this newspaper. In El Sardinero they calibrate everything under a project called 'Player 360'. Among all the tools, one stands out: “All the players fill in a comment from time to time about how they are, what they have slept, fatigue, muscle load, etc.. We accumulated 25,000 responses, that helps us a lot when it comes to analyzing the player and our work,” he sums up.

In Valladolid, this questionnaire is daily for the 200 children who are part of the Pucela youth academy. “We measure body composition, we make individualized plans…. There is an assessment of all the players and we create individual objectives for them, with a weekly monitoring program”, says Javi Torres, coordinator of processes of the Valladolid youth academy.

Example of a statistical card of a match. THE WORLD

Within the Impulse Plan promoted by LaLiga, each club must prepare a technological development plan and reach the minimum objectives detailed by the organization. “If the clubs grow, LaLiga grows,” says Juan Florit, director of Sports Projects for LaLiga. For this there are many platforms: 'Football ISM' or 'Catapult' for medical data, GPS and physical load evaluations; 'Power Bi', 'Nacsport' or 'Cinfo' for tracking and eventing, which are those statistics based on the actions that take place during the exercises; 'Ligen' or 'Wyscout' for scouting work.. A summary: “I am not going to sign anyone just for the data, but I am not going to sign anyone without the data,” explains Elías, who coordinates a tool at Sevilla that collects more than 1,000 variables.

In Nervión they have created their own tools such as 'AIFootball', for the work of sports management; 'AiScouting', to optimize the work of the scouts; 'AiRadar', “a tool for detecting early talent”; and 'AiTracking', to track youth squads from the club who went to other leagues and can leave some percentage of sales in the future. “The data must be focused on the development of the player, not only on his purchase or sale in inferiors or in the first team.”

The objective? Create the largest number of profiles for the first team and for professional football. Because LaLiga, financially besieged by the Premier in recent years, has realized that it can only grow from its foundations: its youth system. “Our goal is that 20% of our staff is from the house. That gives us savings in transfers, in salaries and offers us a feeling of belonging”, explains Miguel Calzado, director of the Betis youth academy. “And in 4 years, the ideal is to make at least one sale of a youth squad to generate that economic surplus value that allows us to continue growing,” he argues. On the other side of the city, the message is similar. “What we want is for each player to be worth many millions more in two years,” says Elías. And for this, the Holy Grail : the data.

As if it were a sign, José María Calderón appeared at the concentration of the team in Malaga where they had arrived as the second stage in the preparation for the World Cup in Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. The point guard whose injury led to Ricky Rubio's first start in the national team. The man who took over against the United States and allowed the Masnou player to appear before the world. He shared smiles with his ex-teammates and shared confidences with the coach, but Ricky, his replacement, was not there.. And Sergio Scariolo, of course, was very sorry.

“What has happened is a very personal matter for Ricky, privately and personally we have to be as close as we can to him,” Scariolo said of a player who is something more to him.. “He's not just a player for me, he's like a nephew, he's a very close person and that's what counts,” insisted the Italian and asked for privacy for the player's process.

The coach had already forgotten his bad mood on Wednesday, especially after Ricky confirmed to him out loud a day later what was happening to him and of course his support and that of the entire Spanish Basketball Federation was unconditional. “In #LaFamilia, people have always come before results. All my love and support for Ricky, and my admiration for his transparency and through it his ability, once again, to lead by example,” he wrote on his social networks.

Ricky's last 72 hours with the national team had been hard for everyone. That farewell to “take care of his mental health” was nothing but the end of a sensation that was settling in the federation since the point guard left for Barcelona on Monday, July 31.. And for which Scariolo himself was forced to call Juan Núñez, before Ricky confirmed what was happening to him.

Something that nobody in the selection noticed. Not even Rudy Fernández, the other R from that marvelous era of La Penya with which Aíto García Reneses made Spain fall in love and a friend of Ricky's who he has said is “very brave”.. “Personally, I feel annoyed for not having realized it in that situation because we have been with him and we have not been able to see him, to be with him when he needed it,” explained the captain of the team and friend of the point guard from El Masnou.

This Monday, Spain had arrived at the Higuerón Training Center in Fuengirola to prepare two matches of height. First, on the 11th against Luka Doncic's Slovenia and then, on the 13th, the great test before the World Cup in Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines, against the United States, one of the favorite teams for the championship along with Spain, current champion.

Selection, by the way, before which Ricky Rubio, MVP of the World Cup in China in 2019, lit his magic for the first time. “We have to give him time to find himself with energy and strength to play basketball again,” Scariolo said, “with a smile,” Rudy completed..

The Barça basketball section already has a new reinforcement for Roger Grimau's first project at the helm of the Barça first team. The entity chaired by Joan Laporta has announced this Monday the incorporation of Jabari Parker, a power forward who was number two in the NBA draft in 2014 and who, after a few years in which injuries have greatly affected his performance, lands in the Palau Blaugrana clearly with the mission of picking up the baton from Nikola Mirotic, whose contract was terminated unilaterally by the club.

The signing of this power forward also comes after Barça also announced the termination of the contract of American Cory Higgins, who still had a year left on his contract, as one more measure to cut expenses, given that his, Like Mirotic's, it was one of the highest chips on the squad. Parker, who throughout his career has gone through teams such as the Milwaukee Bucks, the Chicago Bulls, the Washington Wizards, the Atlanta Hawks, the Sacramento Kings or the Boston Celtics, until now his last experience as a player, arrives at Barça eager to rediscover his best level after having chained multiple physical problems.

The injuries, throughout the last years, have been an ordeal for him. In particular, two anterior cruciate ligament tears that left him out of action for a long time, to which shoulder or ankle problems were also added.. So much so that in the last five years he has only been able to play 31 games. His experience at Barça, in addition, will be the first in Europe and, despite the fact that initially the official statement from the club assured that his incorporation was pending passing the pending medical check-ups, the transfer has been considered completely closed from his social networks .

A signing that, in this case, joins those of Joel Parra, Willy Hernangómez and Darío Brizuela to put together a squad that, despite the losses of Sanli, Tobey, Kuric, Higgins and, above all, Mirotic, is shaping up to be terribly competitive to face the next course.

The most lackluster season of Spanish rugby concludes with hope. With the fans resigned to not seeing the XV del León in the World Cup in France, with senior teams in transition and whose results -in general- have raised doubts, the men's sub20 conquered the qualifying Trophy with authority and will play in the World Cup in 2024. your category.

He won by knocking down topics. physical inferiority. The Spanish striker almost always outplayed their rivals and the team maintained a high pace in the decisive minutes. lack of confidence. The U20 Lions began by losing (15-0) in the final against Uruguay, but at the break they had already come back (15-24) and in the second half they maintained the lead (32-39).. Faced with an absolute team that for a decade has used professionals trained abroad, the vast majority of these young people have grown up in our country. A success of the quarry and many challenges for the future.

“Follow a common game system, everyone go for the same thing, the first ten minutes are to look for a gap in the rival and attack it”. This is how Ignacio Piñeiro summarizes some of the keys to these victories. The third row (1.98 and 103 kilos), a youth player from Rugby Club Valencia, had already made his debut with the senior team. “I have sacrificed many matches with my club, exams and above all vacations, I haven't had a summer vacation for three years”. He will only rest a few days. On August 11, he joined the 'promises' team of Oyonnax, recently promoted to the French first division.

The U20 team in the Trophy final against Uruguay World Rugby

The conjunction that Piñeiro praises took time. About three months of work, between concentrations and preparatory games, have matured the team. Later, Raúl Pérez Aspirina has greased and developed it to win the World Cup qualification. The latter is responsible for High Performance of the Spanish Federation. “We didn't expect it now. Although we knew that we could be close, we believed that next year we could have results”, he assures. “It's a very good start to bet on this project.”

With the inspiration of his native Argentina and the financing of the International Federation, Aspirina works to launch several academies distributed throughout Spain that can guide the elite to the boys and girls who already stand out in the clubs. They train them in individual skills, collective concepts, physical preparation, nutrition and medical care.. “Everything focused on the player, assisting him, monitoring and testing him, accompanying his growth, that is going to make more and more competitive players appear,” he explains.. Of the young values, “courage, passion for the game and the desire to improve” stand out.

Marc Ventura coordinates the sports area of the UE Santboiana, the dean club of Spanish rugby. An institution that defines as “family” but that has more than 500 athletes. “The player today has many more skills, more individual technique, much more decision-making, because the coaches are also being trained, the big difference is the individual work”. Emphasizes both physical preparation and the difficulty of raising awareness about it. “Rugby is very demanding, it is important so that there are no injuries. As a school we are trying to show that there is an individual job and it has to be done.”

The U20 team in the Trophy final against Uruguay World Rugby

But rugby suffers a flight of players in the move to the senior category. A jump in which, according to Marc Ventura, “patience” is needed with the player and he must receive “a reward” that stimulates him. He proposes better competitions, holding rallies and tours to give them “quality matches and training”. A function that, he points out, could be carried out by the regional federations but which, he assumes, depends on another factor: money.

The few who glimpse the elite try to make the most of that stage in which others abandon. Adding field, video and gym, Ignacio Piñeiro -20 years old- has dedicated to rugby “about six or seven hours a day” in his clubs in France. “You learn a lot, they specialize, they create players; in Spain we are more articulate to create teams to win titles.”

In the professional clubs of France -and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom-, especially in their 'promising' teams, no less than fifty players born in our country are enrolled. They develop in a much more professional environment but they also find obstacles to attend the calls of the Spanish teams.

“The best thing would be for the players who are trained in the clubs and who are in the academies to stay in Spain”. Raúl Pérez Aspirina sets talent retention as his ultimate goal. “That Spain can attend to those boys and girls who appear with a great profile at 14 years of age, who want to stay because they know that they are cared for and we can carry out their evolution.”

Seven of the 28 players called up for the U20 team were already abroad. Someone else, like Captain Álvaro García, is now starting his adventure. To this is added, recalls Marc Ventura, sports coordinator of the Santboiana, a competition that is a hotbed of future professionals. Something out of the reach of any Spanish club. “If we cannot offer a contract in the first team, because the ones we have are few, we must offer an environment where he is very comfortable and make the club love him,” concludes Ventura, who insists on the option of, at least, giving scholarships.

The U20 team in the Trophy final against Uruguay World Rugby

He appreciates positive steps and calls for others that should have been started earlier.. “You have to work more with the clubs and the autonomic ones to get more volume of level players. The academies have their function, but much more must be covered”. He believes that the arrival at the U20 World Cup means an opportunity. “Make it a point to close ranks and start working together, make players stay and give importance to the Spanish player,” says Marc Ventura. A reform approved a few weeks ago has increased the number of formation players that each Division of Honor team has to present in official matches. A wider door for a quarry that generates illusion.

“Since 2001, the generations are rising exponentially, it's a reality”, stresses the player Ignacio Piñeiro. He aspires to dedicate himself professionally to rugby. “Hopefully, it is very difficult, very few arrive, you have to have a plan b, not to say that plan a is the studies”