Athletic had beaten Barça in the last two overtimes that both teams had played, the final of the 2021 Super Cup and the round of 16 of the 2022 Copa del Rey.. This year, extra time at San Mamés once again ruled against Xavi Hernández's team, who managed to overcome Guruzeta's initial goal but succumbed in the final stretch.

It was a dramatic start for Barça, one more in a season that already has too many negative starts.. In the League, Granada scored after 17 seconds and Alavés at 18; In the Champions League, Antwerp scored at 75. And in the Cup, Guruzeta touched Iñaki Peña's net at 36.

Lewandowski, on the rebound, and Yamal, who became the second youngest scorer in the Cup in the last 30 years, made it 1-2. The Barça player is 16 years and 195 days old, Eto'o was 16 and 184 in 1997, when he scored for Leganés.

From there, drama was born for Barça against a superior Athletic team that left Xavi's team without one of the most affordable titles of the year.. Not because of the quality of their rivals, but because of the few games necessary to lift the trophy. In the Champions League they must overcome three qualifying rounds before being able to play in the final and in the League they are 7 points behind Madrid and 8 behind Girona, although Míchel's team has one more game.

Xavi's team has missed out on two titles in the month of January, and both with a disastrous image. 4-1 in the Spanish Super Cup and 4-2 in San Mamés after the goals of the Williams brothers. An elimination that forces the Blaugrana to climb back to one of the top two places in the League in order to travel to the next Arabian Super Cup.

“We can be proud”

“I already said in the draw that we had not had luck with the rival,” Xavi admitted to the media. “We have tried, I think we have competed well against a great team that is very strong at home. We had the winning goal with Lamine's chance. We can be proud,” said the coach.

The Barça coach confessed that “we have not had the best possible scenario. When it is a single match in the opposite field… It is difficult to win. That is the Cup.” “We leave with our heads held high for competing with young guys. I'm calm, the most important titles remain,” he concluded.

On the pitch, Ronald Araujo lamented, although he tried to be positive: “It's sad to lose this game and be left out of the Cup. We wanted to fight for this title but I'm left with the fact that we compete with many casualties, many young people… We have to be more intelligent with one minute left,” he recalled, regarding Nico Williams' goal, Athletic's fourth.

“It's a hard blow but we have to keep fighting. We have an important game against Naples. We are going to fight until the end for this shirt,” added the Uruguayan.

Iñaki: “Not even in the best of dreams”

The duel left one hero above the rest: Iñaki Williams. The forward arrived at Athletic's training camp on Wednesday morning directly from the African Cup, which has been held in recent weeks in the Ivory Coast. 6,000 kilometers of travel to enter the second half and score 3-2 in extra time.

“Not even in the best of dreams. Yesterday I did not imagine being here after a very hard blow… Thanks to Athletic,” he declared, summarizing his last 24 hours a bit: “Everything was very fast, the trip was long “and I haven't even been able to rest but I wanted to be here. Even if I hadn't played I wanted to help the team.”

“We are still feeling emotional,” says Cristina Gutiérrez (Burgos, 1991) with her brand new (and heavy) Touareg in her arms.. A few days ago, as if it were a thriller, he won with his co-pilot Pablo Moreno and in the last stage a Dakar in the Challenger category, which is history, of motors and equality.. She was the second woman to achieve this – the first was Jutta Kleinschmidt in 2001 -, the first Spanish. And he did it, to further enhance his proposed mission of “changing mentalities” in Arabia.

You have still had to see some of the patients at your dentistry clinic these days. Yes, yes, I have still had to see some mouths. Every time I am removing more patients. I do orthodontics, the treatments last a year and a half or so. I have 5% left of what I had. When I finish I will dedicate myself 100% to the sport. His victory had a movie outcome. Everything happened at the last second, we are still assimilating it. We had been second for a long time, 20 minutes behind, but the Dakar is 8,000 kilometers and even the last meter something can happen to you. That's what makes it so special.. I started ahead of Mitch Guthrie and pushed hard, knowing that if something happened I wouldn't know. And that's what happened. I reach the finish line and realize that I will probably win the Dakar because my partner is standing still. Was I hoping then? Always. And even more so when they are such complicated terrain. I went out hoping to steal minutes. I didn't know how many, but I wanted to give it my all. How do you remember those moments of uncertainty before knowing you were the winner of the Dakar? It was very intense. There was no coverage, I was trying to refresh the page to see how Guthrie was doing and it didn't work. Twenty-something minutes passed, which was mathematically what I needed to win. When they told us that he was definitely stopped and was not going to enter, we started jumping, shouting, the whole team…Do you feel that your life changed in an instant? There are many years of work, in which, due to different circumstances, , I had always stayed at the doors. The Dakar is often thankless. You never know how it's going to go. You have to have respect for the race. I take this as a reward for the effort, for the dedication, for all the years I have been fighting.

Regardless of the result, next year he was going to make the leap to the premier category with Dacia, in the same team as Loeb and Al-Attiyah. Will this make it different? I wanted to say goodbye to the Challenger category by winning. It tastes much better that way, of course.. It is the second time in history that a woman enters an official team and speaks highly of Dacia. And share a team with Sebastian Loeb… He changed my life. Where did your passion for motors come from? Since I was very little. My father was very fond of racing, but he didn't have the opportunity to race. My older brother had a small motorcycle, I was very heavy and I insisted over and over again to let me have it. My father has an open mind, he has never put barriers or brakes on me, nor has he let me be afraid. I have to thank her. There are some images of her as a girl driving a car. She was six years old, on a small farm that my grandfather owned. I was very heavy on the car issue. I asked my father so much… He trusted me, I had already gone karting and had touched an engine. The pedals were raised with a hydraulic system, which is why she arrived so small. The first Spanish woman to win the Dakar, the second in history… Do you feel like you are breaking barriers? I have broken several glass ceilings, but because there were almost no women. So it is easy to be a pioneer or open doors that were previously unthinkable.. I consider that I have a responsibility to be able to pave the way, to ensure that other girls do not have these difficulties. I would like to be a model for other people to motivate themselves in their dreams. That would be great, really. It wasn't easy to achieve success. Did you think about throwing in the towel? Yes. It was during the time of covid, almost all the sponsors pulled out and I was forced to say that I was not going to the Dakar. By luck or fate, a good team presented me with an offer and they left me the structure almost free. Still, I had to ask for a loan. Fate told me not to leave him at that moment. I was already convinced that it was my end in the world of sports. It has been a complicated road. The motor world is ungrateful. Even training requires a lot of financial outlay. I have had to make many sacrifices. That is why it is so worth fighting for what you want, because even positive things come from the bad.

Triumph in a man's world. It has been difficult for me to assert myself, I have had to prove much more than a man. I have always wanted to ignore certain comments. That there were and I like to denounce it, because that is how change is generated. And not only from men, there are also comments among us that we have assimilated by society and that we think do no harm.. I heard: 'It's impossible for you to do those times, something has to be wrong'. Or: 'I'll check your car from top to bottom, that can't be'. That distrust affects you. If you do something wrong, it seems that the mistake is three times worse than that of a man. It was significant to achieve it in Arabia. It is nice to carry that message. You have doubts when you go to these types of countries to compete, about how they are going to treat you. There are situations in which they look at you strangely. But there are others in which even the men are very happy for the women. There is a little bit of everything, but they also want the country to be open to other cultures. But it is true that there we live in a bubble, we move from one bivouac to another and see little.

The game ends and, win or lose, Carlos Alcaraz gets on the stationary bike. A routine that has already become a tradition, an exercise that allows you to relax, relax, and stretch.. He did not fail this Wednesday, despite the elimination in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open at the hands of Alexander Zverev, and it was right there, in the middle of the gym, when he began to analyze what happened. He was hugged first by his older brother Álvaro, then by his representative Albert Molina, later by his physiotherapist Juanjo Moreno and, in the end, by his coach in this Grand Slam, Samuel López, to do a joint study.. Because? Why was Zverev so superior? Why did Alcaraz hardly have any opportunities?

«I don't know what to say, I don't know what happened. Right now I'm hot and I don't know what conclusions to draw. Surely we will reach conclusions with my team and all together we will improve. On a mental level I cannot have these lapses, this feeling of not finding the feeling. I can play better or worse, but I have to keep my shots. This cannot happen to me again, I have to improve it,” commented Alcaraz, who assured that he had not been affected by the absence of his usual coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, absent in Melbourne after knee surgery.

More than lamenting his own performance, Alcaraz wanted to praise the performance of his rival, Zverev, who had already become a kind of bête noire.. The German is already the one who has beaten him the most times -five-, with a very clear balance on cement -one victory for the Spanish and four defeats-. «Sascha played a great game. It started as it should have started and as I thought it was going to, aggressive on serve.. Against players of this level it is difficult to come back and come back,” added the Spaniard who now, in the remainder of the tournament, risks his position in the ATP ranking.. Although he will close the gap with Novak Djokovic for number one, if Daniil Medvedev takes the title he will take away number two and drop him to three.

The upcoming calendar

Now Alcaraz will return home, to Villena, to continue improving with Ferrero – he talked about training his serve more – and will face the long season that awaits him. In February he will return to the South American clay court tour, with the ATP 250 in Buenos Aires and the ATP 500 in Rio de Janeiro confirmed, in March he will defend his title at the Indian Wells Masters 1000 and his semi-finals at the Miami Masters 1000 and in spring he will return to Europe to face the clay tournaments – Godó, Madrid, Monte Carlo and Rome – and the second Grand Slam of the year, Roland Garros.

“Nobody is perfect. I'm not going to make excuses for my age, but I'm 20 years old.. I know I can't have these disconnections, it's something I need to improve.. The good thing is that I know it and I have to work on it. If I look back, it happened more before and now less,” said Alcaraz, positive despite his defeat yesterday in Australia.. As he commented, for him, now the favorite to win the title is Novak Djokovic due to his five-set experience, although he applauded Jannik Sinner's “incredible tennis” so far in the tournament. “I will watch that semifinal, that's for sure,” the Spaniard commented at a press conference.

Carlos Alcaraz was filled with pride to attempt the miracle, but it was difficult, very difficult, almost impossible.. What would have happened if it had started the way it ended? It will no longer be possible to know. The Spaniard fell this Wednesday against Alexander Zverev in the Australian Open quarterfinals in three hours of play. It was one of the worst starts to the game of his career.. It was a comeback of character that showed what he was capable of.. At 20 years old, another step in his learning. With his game, a missed opportunity in Melbourne, where he has not yet come close to glory. [Narrative and statistics (6-1, 6-3, 6-7 [2], 6-4)]

It was a very strange duel because, beyond tennis, Alcaraz fluctuated in what never fails: his spirit.. At the beginning of the third set, he became desperate as never before, stuck in the center of the Rod Laver Arena, lost, overwhelmed, unmotivated.. And then, suddenly, when everything was lost, he found himself on the court, began to smile and even enjoyed one of the best tie-breaks that can be remembered.. His team looked at him and was amazed: first, by discouragement and then, by pride.

The horrible beginning

In a remarkable, almost excellent tournament, with complete performances, Alcaraz was not Alcaraz, which is strange. Against one of the best servers on the circuit, Zverev, he did not find his position against the rest and that made him desperate. In the first two sets, his opponent won almost all the points – 35 out of 39 – and, focused on avoiding it, the Spaniard forgot his own tennis. Nothing was working for him. Neither his service -55% first in the first set-, nor his forehand -11 unforced errors-, absolutely nothing. Those who know him say that in the first games you can tell if he will win the game or not and this Wednesday it was soon known that it would go wrong.. His first two serves were unsuccessful: double fault. This is how the first two hours of the meeting were summarized.

For many minutes it seemed that the number two in the ranking would complete his worst match in a Grand Slam, perhaps even in his career.. Now it was placed here, now, there and then, a little further; He looked at the track, he moved along it and it seemed gigantic, immense, an endless plain where there was not a single place for him.. Rarely was he so lost.

The final reaction

And suddenly he woke up. In the third set, when anyone would have given up, with 5-2 down, he exposed all his character to get a break, the first of the match, and take Zverev to the tie-break.. The German always finds it difficult to close his victories and this time it was no different, he trembled, Zverev trembled, but Alcaraz also changed a lot. For the rest, he discovered a little space on the court where he could respond to his rival's projectiles and recovered his game.. As if nothing had happened before, he improved his serve – from 55% at first to 73% -, his forehand became scary again and from shot to shot he started to like it.

In the fourth set, if a body language expert had had to bet on a winner, he would have placed all his money in Alcaraz's box.. Smiling, he cheered on his own people while a devastated Zverev even called a medical timeout. The German had just played two rounds of five sets, accumulated five more hours on the court than the Spaniard during the tournament, and the passing of the minutes was detrimental to him.

The conclusions

But he had too much advantage and too much habit of playing on the wire. With 4-4 on the scoreboard, when another tie-break and even a fifth set of scandal was in sight, Zverev sentenced with a definitive break and took his place in the semifinals where he will meet Daniil Medvedev. In the other part of the draw there will be Novak Djokovic against Jannik Sinner.

For Alcaraz, the negative part is that: he will not be at the party that his great rivals of recent times will star in and he will not do so due to his own demerits, due to a horrible start against Zverev. But there is also a positive part: he reached the quarterfinals, with what it implies in the ATP ranking, and against the German he confirmed that he has plenty of character. What would have happened if it had started the way it ended? It will no longer be possible to know.

As the year ended, especially after what happened after the final of the Women's World Cup, it is difficult to believe that there was a moment in which the big decision of the Spanish Football Federation was to give continuity or not to a coach, Luis de la Fuente, who had debuted three months ago. We are on June 14 of this year. Silence surrounds the surroundings of the Landhuishotel De Bloemenbeek, a discreet and charming hotel in the middle of nowhere, 17 kilometers from Enschede, the city where the next day, the 15th, the national team plays against Italy in the semifinal of the Nations League.

«Why are we going to fool ourselves?. If we had lost that game, I think Luis de la Fuente would not have continued.”. This is said by one of the people who was closest to the outlawed Luis Rubiales during his entire mandate, someone who was close to the now former president that June 14. Things had been bad for three months, just the period between this moment and the coach's debut.

Month of March. Luis de la Fuente, Rubiales' surprising bet to say goodbye to Luis Enrique, took charge of the senior team after more than a decade achieving success with the youth teams. His age (61 then, 62 now) and his lack of experience in top-level clubs made him suspicious in the eyes of the most elitist.. Everything started more or less well, with a relatively comfortable victory against Norway (3-0, although two of the three goals came very late and after the Nordics, who played in Malaga without Haaland, wereted several clear options). But three days later, the Glasgow match arrived.. Luis de la Fuente turned the team upside down. He changed eight of 11 players (Kepa, Rodrigo and Mikel Merino barely repeated) and the mess that the team had in Hampden Park was one of those that stings.

However, what stood out the most was a phrase in the subsequent press conference: «I have told the players that this is the way. We are going to grow, for sure.”. In that room, the looks of the journalists who usually cover the information on the Spanish team drew an incredulity that, in some way, advanced what would come later: that distrust of the person who had named him in Luis de la Fuente just before starting that match against Italy, we return to June, on the 15th.

However, that day Spain plays a good game. Not against a great rival, since Italy barely has the name left to scare the staff, but a convincing match, resolved with a goal from Joselu – the proper name of this new stage, perhaps along with Rodrigo – with just a few minutes left. for the end. That victory turned a guillotine into a catapult, because since June 15, everything has been good news for the coach and his boys.. Three days later, on Sunday the 18th, in Rotterdam, Spain lifted its first trophy in many years.. In a very tough final against Croatia, which clung to the game like a tick, the team offered signs of experience, poise, security…. A good handful of those intangibles as necessary as quality or talent to win in this sport called football.

The national coach, Luis de la Fuente. EFE

He knew how to hold his own against a veteran group and, although it had to be on penalties, Spain, eleven years after the 2012 Euro Cup, won a title again. A title whose pedigree is still minuscule, but a title for which, after all, it was necessary to overcome Italy and a Croatia that was a finalist in the World Cup in Russia and a semi-finalist in Qatar, upset by Spain in the round of 16 in the Euro 2021. That trophy, raised by the last vestige of the golden era, Jordi Alba, gave way to a team that has won (and scored in some) all its games since then, showing a structure where eight or nine names from De la Fuente's eleven type They go out alone, and that despite Gavi's injury, who was one of them.

They beat Georgia (1-7) and Cyprus (6-0) in September. He gave another course of severity in October against Scotland (2-0) and Norway (0-1) and finished the job smoothly in November by dispatching Cyprus (1-3) and Georgia (3-1). Without brilliance, but showing a solid structure, some automatisms assumed by the troops and with the brilliance above all of the best midfielder in the world. In this solvent way, Luis de la Fuente arrived at the Eurocup, who leaves 2023 with the feeling that everything could have changed that June 15 in Enschede, the day when suspicions turned into certainties. Until the first ones return. This is football.

Three days before Christmas, in the stands of the Nova Escollera pool at the Barcelona Natació Club there was expectation: Mireia Belmonte was going to compete in the Spanish Club Cup, dozens of boys and girls from the entity were waiting. The best Spanish swimmer in history was registered in a couple of events and in the previous days she had trained in the same pool. Everything was ready, everything prepared. But when the protagonists of the first final, the 100 styles, began to warm up, Belmonte was not. Retirement, DNF, drop.

“He wanted to test himself, he really wanted to, but he couldn't compete because his problems with his shoulders relapsed,” Luis Villanueva, technical director of the Spanish Swimming Federation (RFEN), explains to EL MUNDO, who is trying to resolve the doubt that floats in the water. for months: Will Belmonte be in the next Olympic Games in Paris 2024? At the moment “you can't have high expectations.”

«Mireia has already done much more than what could be asked of her. At the Tokyo Olympic Games he had an excellent performance with that fourth place in the 400 medley, but since before, since 2017 or 2018, physical problems are not allowing him to compete as he would like.. Participating in other Games would be a great culmination for her career, but today you can't have high expectations,” says Villanueva, who admits that the four-time Olympic medalist continues to suffer breaks in her training plan due to her injuries and that your calendar has had to be rewritten on several occasions.

New coach, same motivation

The goal is to reach Paris 2024, but first you need to qualify and this involves shining at the Spanish Open that will take place in June. «Follows a different plan from the rest, very individualized. All we coaches can do is adjust her preparation and try to help her achieve that ticket,” says the coach about Belmonte, who at 33 years old has spent entire weeks doing feet, without being able to work his arms.

A sign of character. Because the Tokyo 2020 Games were supposed to be the end of the road, but Belmonte decided to continue. Ambition, desire. Despite the departure of his usual coach, Fred Vergnoux, who was in Belgium and now trains in his native France, Belmonte stayed with the group of young people formed by the Canadian Ben Titley at the High Performance Center (CAR) in Sant Cugat and kept the flame alive. According to what they say, he adapted well to the new coach's methods and even helped the kids with advice.

During the summer of 2022 he was able to compete in the Mare Nostrum trophy, the European Championship in Rome and the World Cup and everything seemed on track.. But the pain in my shoulders returned.. The winter break that was announced as temporary was lengthening and, in the end, he spent 14 months without competing. When he returned he only had one plan and one hope left.. The plan was to qualify for the Paris 2024 Games along with the 4×200 relay at the Rotterdam Meeting, which was not possible. The hope now is to recover physically between now and June and obtain an individual ticket.

His last bullet

«You can't make long-term plans now. “It all depends on your physical condition, your problems with your shoulders,” Villanueva accepts.. In 2024, due to lack of space, Belmonte will not be able to be in the World Cup, which strangely will be in February, and it will be difficult to compete in the European Championship because it coincides with the Spanish Open, which will give passes to the Paris Games.. There everything will be played on one card: either classification or retirement.

If he achieves it, it will be the best news for swimming on the way to an Olympic event that is once again announced gray. As already happened in Tokyo 2020, Hugo González will be the only medal candidate, the rest will at most opt to be in the finals or semifinals. «Our chances of medals are very small. We hope to enter some finals and there, one or two swimmers could fight for the podium. Our goal is to be in Paris with several relays and with young people in individuals who can grow from experience,” Villanueva, technical director of the RFEN, recognizes again in the face of a decisive year for Mireia Belmonte, the biggest star that Spanish swimming has ever had. .