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A twist dyes the Barça world

Four continents in five years. Dyeing the Barça world and enriching yourself with the thousand and one experiences that different cultures teach you. Francesc Pujol from Girona will embark on a new adventure in Moscow as director of the Barça Academy, having visited Sydney, Cairo and Dubai. “At the end of June, the opportunity arose to join the Moscow academy and it is a challenge that I face with great enthusiasm,” he says.

At the age of 28, the coach of Torroella de Montgrí explains that “having been to different academies has given me an experience, although each context is different and seeing the world always attracts a lot. It’s a new culture and a new way of doing things, which I hope will make me better. ” Given the personal and professional growth that this entails, Pujol was immediately convinced to accept the challenge posed by the Barça club. Now, however, we will have to wait for the time to pack, which is being delayed because of the coronavirus: “It is an inconvenience because the borders are closed and it is more difficult to get a visa. This makes it impossible for me to arrive in Moscow today, but if all goes well around October I will be able to join on the field.

This is not the first time that COVID-19 has hit him. Last season he was the director of the Barça Academy in Sydney and in mid-February he had to return to Girona, where he continued to work from home. “Within days of arriving here they declared a state of alarm and confinement, I had to do telecommuting until June, which is when the season ends, because the Sydney academy was still open. They kept throwing there, ”he says.

The adventure began five years ago when he left for Dubai to work as a coach at Barça’s academy. Quickly, the entity saw its potential and sent him to Cairo as a director. Pujol spent two seasons in Egypt and the last in Australia. Having lived in so many places “is quite positive because they are totally different cultures. There are very different contexts between Dubai and Egypt, and even more so in Sydney. “I am a positive person and I always like to stick to everything that brings me personal and professional growth. Everywhere I tried to extract the best and the worst to grow, ”he says.

The Barça philosophy

Maintain possession of the ball with a game of touch and control, press in block and in solidarity with the lines together on the opposing field, quickly recover the ball, seek verticality to overcome the rival defense and end up defining effectively and accurately, has given Barça many successes throughout its history. However, making this philosophy understood in other countries is another matter. “The characteristics of the players or the way of thinking within the culture are quite different. Both in Dubai and in Cairo they take into account the conditional aspect, which would be the most physical and technical of the players “, he points out. In Sydney, on the other hand, although “professional football has been a recognized sport for about 30 years, the academy breathed a very European atmosphere, of understanding football in our own way and believing a lot in what they are taught and transmitted. We like that and it makes our job easier. ”

Pujol explains that “there have been places where it has been harder to convince of everything we do, but luckily we have scientific resources and evidence, demonstrable on the field, that make all families characterize us for who we are and see us as something different. That’s what makes Barça special.

“Being a director you have a lot of responsibilities. You are like the coach of the coaches and you have to transmit the philosophy and methodology of the game that we have in the club, through the values ​​that we believe that the sport must have “, he comments. Making it clear how Barça works in the rest of the world “is not an easy task, although we have years and many days of constant work during the season to apply our game and convince”. Pujol has already applied all this to three continents and will soon do so in the fourth.

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