Mendilibar, the football of bread with oil from a Morante without veronicas: "I want a pass at 25 meters, not the one next door"
Spinach, celery and lime juice, yogurt with chia, seed bread with turkey and avocado, and coffee with soy milk. The sophistication of the breakfasts offered in the coolest places, always in the most appropriate proportion of carbohydrates and proteins, has a lot in common with those soccer fields full of arrows, statistics and colored spaces to know the areas of influence. of the players. They look like the tablecloths of a 'brunch', where the accumulation of ingredients between meals surpasses the most creative breakfast and can lead to satiety in the same way that information overload leads to absurdity. After several experiences, more than one begs for toast with oil.
The Sevilla players were among them, after a complex season and cohabitation with Jorge Sampaoli, who must be treated as if he were the disciple of a current, not a simple footballer. If not, you're lost. they were. When that happens, it is best to apply the aglosaxon maxim 'back to basics', return to basics. Curiously, it was coined by the same people who later merged 'breakfast' and 'lunch' to invent the word 'brunch'. It is difficult to imagine José Luis Mendilibar in one of them with the Stevia sachet in hand to sweeten the coffee with soy milk, but few know better what going back to basics means.
MOU FALLS BEFORE THE ANTI-TOP
The basics are the fundamentals, but not the primitive or the rude, a mistake that this football inserted in the 'showbusiness' usually makes: you need to do a lot of things to spend a lot and teach everything you do and spend. Mendilibar had never belonged to that football, a Second player and coach who had won titles in Preferred, Third, Second B and Second, but never with a First team. He is not a top coach, in the sense that Mourinho said years ago, defeated by the Basque in Budapest. The Europa League is, therefore, a cosmic leap to the age at which others retire, 61 years, and that changes the pace to Sevilla, which has already renewed. He called a firefighter to teach players signed for something else to turn off the descent, and now he meets 'Mendilover', whom the fans dress with the same lights as those who remove the 'sentío' in the Maestranza. It is a Morante without verónicas.
«I have my model and I follow it wherever I go, regardless of the place and the category. I like fast transitions, defense-attack or attack-defense, and I don't like to combine for the sake of combining. I find it funny that he defends himself with the ball. And if you only have it 40% of the time, what do you do the other 60%? You'll have to steal it, I say.”. Long before arriving at Sevilla, Mendilibar explained to me, vehemently, a way of understanding the game that has not changed, although then, still in the great era of possession, his words seemed anathema: «I prefer the pass at 25 meters than at partner next door. He was not trying to ingratiate himself with the mainstream, despite finding himself at a critical moment after failing on the bench at San Mamés, the Grail of all Basque coaches.
THE DISCOVERER OF DAVID SILVA
Fernando Lamikiz presented him, in 2005, as the Ferguson of Athletic. It lasted 13 games, after being forced to play the Intertoto Cup against Romanian Cluj, something that conditioned the entire preseason, and questioned in a locker room where heavyweights refused to enter ice pools after training sessions and games. to accelerate muscle recovery. Currently, cryotherapy is a common practice, even in sub-zero chambers, for elite athletes.
Curiously, the man with rapid transitions was the one who valued one of the interpreters of the Spain of possession. Mendilibar recruited a very young David Silva for Eibar, in the Second Division, with whom he was about to achieve the club's first promotion in its history and left his mark for his game. «When people refer to David, they only talk about technique, but it is much more, because quality is more than touch. He is super competitive, because he puts everything in, the leg, the body, whatever…. It is one of the best I have directed, ”recalled the coach before finding in Seville the team of the highest collective quality in his career.
“I WAS A MINGAFRÍA”
Mendilibar himself was in a similar habitat as a footballer, the Sestao led by Irureta in which he had Valverde and Jon Aspiazu as teammates, but he lacked, as he says, the squeeze: “I was a 'mingafría', as Javi Clemente says ». In the band, today, it's the opposite.
Some players under his command remember Mendilibar as the 'Volatas', because he made those who made mistakes in training do somersaults. Close to them, he is also direct and frontal, like when he told Bono that he would play in Europe but not in the League, where he chose Dmitrovic. There were two reasons. The first is that the Moroccan was not in the Basque's first training sessions because he met his team; the second, that he knew the Serb from his second stint at Eibar. The same happened with Bryan Gil or Joan Jordán, with whom he joked as soon as he arrived, telling him that he was slow as an “old donkey”.. Humor is a symptom of a healthy wardrobe. Dmitrovic gave exceptional numbers in the League. Bono was a hero in Budapest.
Basque in Seville, he did not hesitate to go to Holy Week or the Fair, to the Rakitic booth, although it is not explained how he can resist wearing a suit and tie at 30 degrees. Mendi prefers polo shirts or tracksuits, although today, when he arrives for training, he seems to be in an airport, as he told Jon Rivas, due to the amount of gadgets he finds. Just two goals and a ball. They are the bread and oil of football.