Lluís Cortés, the first Spanish coach to win a women's Champions League: "Not everyone is interested in our football growing"
Lluís Cortés (Lleida, 1986) is the only Spanish soccer coach to have won the women’s Champions League to date. He lifted it in 2021 at the helm of a Barcelona team that then completed the treble with the League and the Queen’s Cup. After that success, she vanished from the azulgrana imagination. “The relationship with the players is good and I have received a lot of affection from those people who give value to all that has been achieved. I haven’t felt ignored,” he defends himself. The position on the bench was left to one of his assistants, Jonatan Giráldez, who will be in charge of the Azulgrana in Eindhoven this Saturday in their third consecutive European Cup final, this time against German side Wolfsburg. In the meantime, Cortés made a living. He took over as Ukraine’s women’s coach three months before the war broke out. He did not resign. The journalist lets him talk.
“I suffered through it.. I stopped being a coach to become a father, a big brother, a humanitarian aid coordinator…. I have paid plane and train tickets for the players, I have helped 55 players to find a team, I have helped them to leave the country. Being a coach has been the least of it. The learning has been brutal. But there is no possible consolation for them. It is impossible. That’s why I have suffered. You feel powerless. Our situation in Spain is comfortable, calm…. [Takes a breath, and continues]. I have cried. But not with them. They don’t expect their coach to cry for them, but to help them. But afterwards, alone, in my house, I have. You want to help everybody, but you can’t. If you have a player who’s had a blowout, you can’t help her. If you have a player whose house has been blown up with a rocket, what do you do? You can’t do anything. You just mourn it.”
Cortés looks back. She started coaching girls when she was 16. For no pay. He would set up the cones, and he would also shoot at the goalkeeper, because there were two on the staff.. There was no one else.
It was an act of faith.
Do you know what got me hooked? That the first day I already saw that the girls who played were playing because they really liked soccer. It wasn’t like some boys who played because their parents forced them to, or because social pressure made them be there because all their friends were doing it. With the girls, no. They wanted to play. Even confronting their mothers, their fathers, their friends, and accepting that they would be told a lot of things. This has changed a lot on a social level. Today it is understood that a girl plays soccer. At that time, families preferred them to play a more feminine sport. I told myself that I would fight for them. Do prejudices have an expiration date or will they remain? They have been reduced a lot, but they will always exist. Today it’s normalized for a woman to play soccer.. But in the sick society in which we live there will always be those who criticize things that should never be criticized… To aspire to equality of conditions with the male is really impossible… Perhaps impossible is not the word because nothing is, but it is very difficult. Improbable. And it doesn’t have to be the goal either. I am very radical about that. We don’t have to set ourselves the objective of equaling the masculine, in terms of salary, conditions? Because that is another battle. The men’s business has been ahead of the men’s game for many years, there are a lot of resources invested? We have to compare ourselves with women’s soccer 20 years ago. Are we better off than we were then? Yes or no? Yes, we are. Better than two years ago? Yes. I mean, a woman is never going to get paid like a man in soccer, I don’t think so. And we would be wrong if we want to pursue that. Alexia Putellas, between salary and sponsorships, is making a very good living. And obviously she earns a lot less than Messi or Cristiano. But she’s making a much better living than she could have imagined years ago. And that means that we are doing things right. Does the emergence of women’s soccer have too many dark spots? Unfortunately, yes. It is growing a lot, there is a lot of work that has been done very well. But it is also true that we have worried a lot about growing, but little in consolidating steps that had been taken forward. We have to go towards a more measured, slower growth, and paying more attention to all the factors that can influence women’s soccer. And also understanding the threats we face. Not everyone is interested in growing women's football. We have to fight against a lot of people who might not be interested in this fast and powerful outbreak. Who might not be interested? The competition. And what is it? It could be other sports. Perhaps men's football itself, which may feel undervalued or with positive discrimination towards women's football. What do you think of the gap in Spain between Barça and practically the rest of the teams in the league? There are still many clubs that cannot aspire to a minimum professionalism. And it is bad news for Barça, for the other clubs, for the league, and for the spectator. It's bad news for everyone that the gap is widening.. it's not good for anyone. When I was at Barça, I openly expressed myself and applauded that Real Madrid entered women's football, with the greatest investment and doing things as well as possible.. Because that would help Barcelona itself to continue growing. In the end, as human beings, we have the condition to grow when we feel a threat. Here, if the teams instead of trying to get closer to Barça give up because they see it as impossible, the gap will be bigger every day. Could the professionalization that has been sold to us be fictitious? [Think for a few seconds before answering]. Not fictitious, because there has been a professionalization. But it requires more steps. And we are seeing, from what I read in the media, that there are already problems for the next collective agreement. We need to resolve these conflicts that do not help us lay the next stones. What if the referees strike, what if the players strike, what if the fields do not meet the conditions…. There are many things that we have to change if we want to continue growing.
Courteous, during the interview. ARABA Are the 15 soccer players who resigned from the Spanish team capricious? They were accused of that. I think they are not capricious. They consider that things must be changed, but that is not being capricious. It is a situation that has been poorly managed by all parties, and which unfortunately has reached a point of no return or a very difficult solution.. And this does not help the Federation, nor the players, nor women's football in Spain. I travel a lot. And when you talk about Spanish women's football, many people only ask you about that.. About these 15. And you think… There are many things beyond these 15. They ask you about Barça and these 15. We are going to have visibility for other things more than for these conflicts… There have been federations in which female soccer players have achieved changes. France, Canada… Here it does not seem possible, I think that in Spain many changes have also been achieved, at the level of the Federation and the national team. And the players are aware that the dynamics of today’s national team are very different from those of 10 years ago. At the level of travel conditions, planes, hotels, stadiums where they play, repercussion…. But it is also true that we all have to be very ambitious in order to keep growing.. What the players are claiming is a little out there, but it is also true that we do not know exactly what they are claiming. What is the list of things you intend to improve. Surely it is a topic that internally they will have discussed. And I am also convinced that the Federation is trying to take steps forward and the players are being listened to in this regard. How would it affect the image of Spain if the team went to the World Cup without the bulk of the Barça players? wouldn't it help. You would go to the national team without the best players, or without the ones that the world considers to be the best you have. It is also true that when you, as a coach, have to set up a team or a national team to compete for 40 days, it is not only the one that plays the best, it is not only the one that shoots the best, it is also the one that wants to be, the one that group level suits you more. You do not have to attend only to the level of play, but also to the coexistence. And right now, I think that in the Federation decisions can be made not only because of the theme of the game, but also because of the emotional issue or group cohesion.
Lluís Cortés, with the Champions League won with Barcelona in 2021 after beating Chelsea (4-0) in Göteborg. He arrives at Barça, becomes Fran Sánchez's assistant, and lives in his flesh the great leap forward of Barcelona. Do you feel like a fundamental piece of change? You joined Barça after three seasons in which the women's team had not won anything. zero titles. And the first year with Fran Sanchez we won a Cup. In four years of Barça women’s professionalism, only one Copa de la Reina had been won.What changes have you made? Beyond the influence of the signings.I took over the management of the team in January 2019. Really signings… We signed Oshoala that winter. But I think we changed things at the coaching level, especially the mentality. We became a winning team, which believed in its model of play without taking into account its rivals so much, and above all turning around that feeling of inferiority that could have been with respect to Atlético de Madrid or Athletic Club, who were the ones who were winning in recent years. And then also with respect to the great rivals in Europe. And that ended up consolidating. It was not by losing the final against Olympique Lyon in 2019 (4-1), even if it was an incredible reinforcement. It was the following year, when Wolfsburg eliminated us in the semifinals (1-0) despite us dominating the match.. Alexia said it very well at the time: “There is no distance. And that was the moment when we really consolidated the project.I was talking about the first final against Lyon. It was a seed. It was a radical change. When the season ended and we lost against Lyon, it was very clear to me that there were things we had to change. But we wanted the group to commit to it. We had a meeting with the captains. We needed them to say what we wanted to hear. And we agreed that above all they had outplayed us on a physical level, on a conditional level. In terms of the idea of the game, we had grown a lot and maybe we could be superior, but they ran more, we didn’t win the duels, the aerial ones, not even one? And that could be improved by training more and better.. The following season began with many double sessions, a very hard preseason, even triple sessions some days, being very demanding not only physically, but also in terms of videos, instructions, more tactical instructions… With Patri Guijarro we were very demanding with the percentage of successful passes. But we didn’t just look at the percentage, we also wanted them to make sense. And above all, we set out to be an excellent Barça. I believed that if we were excellent, few teams could beat us. To dominate games, to have possession, to attack the way we wanted to, to win the ball back very quickly…. It demands a lot from you cognitively, physically and technically. But we had to be very demanding in every training session. It takes a lot of wear and tear, but it also gives you titles. And then came the zenith of the treble: yes, it was a logical consequence: no, because there is no logic in soccer.. It doesn’t matter how much you train or improve or sign, you are not going to win. We have seen it with the sporting failures of big clubs that have put in a lot of money and still don’t win.it was neither understood nor explained that, being in the best moment and having just won the Champions League, you left the club.it was a considered decision. I started to take it the day after winning the Champions League. I always said to those closest to me: ‘I will be the coach until we win the Champions League. We hadn’t won anything in recent years. And people told me: ‘You’re crazy. We had worked hard, we had worn ourselves out, then came the Covid, the post-pandemic consequences…. Now there are rúas. But we didn’t do anything to win. We won the Champions League without an audience. I was alone in an apartment in Sant Feliu, without being able to see or seeing my family, my friends, with no social life, and living practically 24 hours as a coach, without being able to disconnect. that wore me out a lot. On a personal level, I felt that I needed to rest, that I needed to disconnect. And there comes a time when you say: 'I need to make this decision and it's better to do it now than in a few months, or that the club will eventually have to throw me out because perhaps I'm not capable of continuing to demand from the players'. At the celebrations , in the tribute documentary there is barely a frame with his image. I have not felt neglected. I have received a lot of love from fans, from people who give value to those two-three years with Lluís Cortés as coach. We have achieved something that this year will not be achieved even if the Champions League is won: the treble. And if they didn't put me in a documentary anymore, or I haven't been invited to something…. It's not a decision I have to make. I did want to disconnect, I needed to rest. In fact, I talked to all the members of my staff and told them that if they had the chance to continue, they should continue.. I wouldn’t go and coach any team. And in that sense I am calm. Do you keep in touch with those who were your players in Barça? Yes, in the Queens League I have coincided with several of them and we talked a lot. I have also met Alexia several times. And the truth is that it’s good. The relationship with the players is good. The fact that one of your assistants took over from you didn’t generate any internal conflict? Two days before announcing that I would not continue, I told Jonathan Giráldez and Rafel Navarro, my two assistants, that I was going to make this decision. That I would not coach anyone. And that if they were offered the job they should take it. In the end, it was a logical decision that had happened to me a few years before. It was a step they could and should have taken. Has the team grown in the last two years without you? Every coach is capable of giving his team different nuances.. It is clear that there have also been signings that have contributed different things. But whether the team is better or worse? It’s very difficult to evaluate. Every season the context is very different, and how do you see this Barça team facing this final? Last year they started as favorites against Olympique in Turin and ended up with a disappointment, but last year, in a wrong way, Barcelona started as favorites. Those of us who have been involved in women’s soccer for a long time knew how Olympique Lyon played and what they were capable of. If they have won eight Champions League titles, it’s for a reason. Against Wolfsburg I do see Barcelona as favorites, it’s true. They have a better team, they play better and they have better players. But I think Wolfsburg can compete very well in one game. And they proved it. He won them a match in the semifinals last year. It is a team that can compete well against them, even better than Arsenal, who was a better rival for Barça. They have Ewa Pajor, Lena Oberdorf or Alexandra Popp, who are great international footballers and can stand up to Barcelona. What shortcomings do you see in this Barça? [He thinks a lot]. In the matches I've seen, sometimes he lacks some fluidity in the game. Maybe he needs to find better scoring situations, create better chances. But in the end, it has very few shortcomings. It is performing very well.
Alexia Putellas, this Friday in Eindhoven. . MEISSNER AP What has helped change Alexia? Her mentality. And the confidence with which he plays. When I joined the team, Alexia was a substitute. She was not being important. And we decided to invest in her, to empower her, to bet on her, and above all to make her believe how good a player she could be. And also her work. The next Ballon d’Or will also be Spanish, I would like to, but I see it difficult. There has not been any Spanish player who has been sufficiently superior to the rest. And I believe that the World Cup will determine the Ballon d’Or.