Quitting doing what you love most and what you’ve done since you were a child must surely be difficult. Doing it at 30 years old and because of an injury, even more so. It must also be the same, but when a point comes where the doctors say “you fold or you won’t be able to live a normal life” there is no turning back. This is what has happened to Marc Rovirola who a few weeks ago announced his retirement from football after a career that has led him to defend the shirts of Banyoles, Girona, Fuenlabrada, Albacete, Atlètic Balears and Cultural Lleonesa. “I had been suffering for some time and had already had hip surgery four years ago. I knew I wasn’t going to make it to 38 playing. When they made it very clear to me, it was one day in the middle of the morning in Madrid. In the afternoon, I went to see the doctor in Valladolid to ask for a second opinion. He said the same thing to me”, recalls the former Cornellà midfielder. An injury to his quadriceps had made things very complicated and the only solution they gave him was to place a prosthesis on his hip. “I didn’t expect it at such a young age, really. However, I am strong-minded and on the same day I began to think that it was over.’ It was time to return home and leave behind a handful of “experiences” and “many friends” that football has allowed him to discover, which sporting successes aside, is what has “filled” him the most.
That boy who dreamed of being Pavel Nedved has put an end to a career that began at an early age in Cornellà and continued at Banyoles kindergarten – “my father didn’t let me go until I started ESO” – and that of Girona. Precisely the figure of his father, as well as that of his agent Marc Bernaus, have played a decisive role in his career. And it was a hair’s breadth that Rovirola does not throw in the towel and starts the illusions of reaching the top to stay in the village to play with friends. He was in his last year as a junior, after spending two years at Girona – youth and cadet – he had returned to Banyoles, with whom he had already made his debut in Tercera. “I told my father that it was enough. That he wanted to study quietly and come to play with his friends. In fact, I started training with Cornellà», he remembers. His father’s stubbornness, however, changed his life. Rovirola went to Banyoles’ first training session and convinced the then coach, Napo, with a couple of plays. “You stay in the first team and don’t move from here”, he told him. Said and done. A season later, Rovirola returned to Girona to play in the youth division of Honor and later in the subsidiary, the last step before the first team.
“I’m not saying that it can be easier now, but before it was the bomb to taste the first team. The subsidiary was in Primera or Segona Catalana and getting there was complicated”, recalls a Rovirola who won the 2014-15 season against Valladolid in Montilivi (2-1). “I thought ‘I’ve made my debut; I can die now'”, reveals the one from Cornellà who reveals that it was “fantastic” to be able to have the shirt with your name on the first team. The definitive jump cost him “because when they wanted to summon me it coincided that I was sanctioned with the subsidiary”, but he finally joined the dynamics of Pablo Machín’s first team with Pere Pons, Mas or Coris, among others. The season was one of honor until a goal from Lugo in added time crushed the guitar and vanished the dream of promotion to Primera. Rovirola had to suffer Caballero’s goal from close range. “I saw the play repeated a thousand times. We were there with Pablo (Íñiguez), I had my mark and I saw that Caballero was going towards the middle. I tried to go there to help, but I wasn’t there in time, apart from the fact that he took three heads off me”, he remembers as if it were today. “I didn’t feel responsible”, he adds to admit that he didn’t sleep that night. “Luckily, the next day we had training and he had to change his mentality immediately”, says a Rovirola who remembers that Caballero also gave him “the guiza” with Cartagena when he played in the Balearic Islands.
Despite the 6 games played and being well seen by Machín and Quique Cárcel, the stage in Montilivi came to an end. He signed for Llagostera, who transferred him to Fuenlabrada where he would begin a long career in Segona B. Here is the other moment that changed Rovirola’s life. “I didn’t want to leave Girona in any way. My agent told me ‘you’ll thank me in a few years’ and he was absolutely right. Thanks to that decision, I have experienced wonderful things and met great friends.” After Fuenlabrada, where he was “the apple of the coach Fernando Morientes’s eye”, he went to Albacete with whom he went up to Segona A, but an injury left him unable to enjoy the silver category . A fact that is his “thorn in the side”. “I couldn’t play and in January I was left without a team. Then with Balears I was on the verge of promotion twice. I’m left with the regret of not having enjoyed a calendar year in Segona».
And now what? Rovirola defines himself as a “restless ass” and is open to everything. “I want to have routines, responsibility and help. I’ve been training since I played and I’m open to everything”, says the one from Cornellà, who has a degree in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences, and two master’s degrees in sports psychology and management. In addition, he is taking a master’s degree in re-adaptation at EUSES. There is no lack of desire to work. He knows he has to do it because even though he has earned a good living in Segona B, he cannot “live on income”. Work in Girona? “If a proposal comes, I would take it with open arms.”
