Santi Cañizares: “Judo has been fundamental in my career as a footballer” – Lanza Digital

The Puertollano goalkeeper reviews several important aspects of his life and how judo helped him in his successful career as a goalkeeper.

Santiago Cañizares presented the book “Cañete much more than a great goalkeeper” a few days ago in Puertollano, together with the authors of the same César Toldrá and Alfonso Gil. A book that has a prologue by Iker Casillas and an epilogue by Fabián Ayala and goes beyond a biography about Santiago Cañizares Ruiz, since he is not only a great goalkeeper. A living legend of Valencia CF, teams like Real Madrid, Elche, Mérida and Celta have also enjoyed it. In addition, the national team has counted on him under the sticks on 46 occasions.

In this sense, Cañizares assures that “I think that I have won the lottery, the best lottery that a person can win, which is to make their vocation their profession, to have a happy, full childhood, surrounded by a hard-working family and honestly, achieving sports dreams that some were unimaginable and then choosing a moment is very complicated”.

What he feels most proud of is “of having a fantastic family with seven children, although one of them is no longer with us, of being able to manage it day by day and thanks to the common and general effort we are all welcome”.

Regarding the legacy he would like to leave behind, the former goalkeeper points out that “I would like not to leave first and thus not have to leave anything behind, but I already learned here in Puertollano from the efforts of my parents, that they both had to work to get things going.” the family and therefore be responsible and honest people, that in a town you have to be honest to maintain business throughout your life, because we all know each other and if I have to leave a legacy, that is simply the example that my friends gave me. parents, to be a responsible and honest person with all the activities that I have carried out”.

By way of summary, Cañizares explains that “everything I tell is rigorously true, my entire childhood in Puertollano, my departure to Madrid, one of the turning points in my life, after 16 years of playing for Real Madrid youth and my sports career, with a lot of anecdotes and experiences that I have lived, circumstances that I have had to overcome and successes that I have had to celebrate, thank God and the effort of those who play with me, and also once football ended, which I think that now everything is going to be a little more relaxed and so on, since certain activities and events appear in my life that do not allow me to sit idly by, my stage as a commentator on radio and television as it occurs, that situation that is absolutely fortuitous, my 10 years running rallies, although I started racing at 40 years old, obviously, I never had the rhythm of people who really went fast but I had a good time, and my personal life in some aspects and delicate anecdotes throughout my life, what I tell is strictly true, I can guarantee that, and what I don’t tell is because I don’t remember, because there have been events that I don’t remember, unfortunately I lost a 5-year-old son to childhood cancer and that It made me reset my brain, I spent many months fighting and then I lost a lot of memory and many events, sometimes with former players or friends we have remembered moments and they have told me because I no longer remembered them, but it surely had to do with this event that somehow completely changed my life.”

José Cañizares, Santi’s father and a great judo teacher, helped Santi a lot by instilling in him the values ​​of sport, discipline and sacrifice and that call from Real Madrid that was a turning point in his life. Without that call “everything would have been more difficult, because my father first allowed me because I was with Calvo Sotelo Juvenil and then I went up to the first team due to the injury of a teammate, who was in Second B, I did the preseason but the In September, I had to join the institute, Fray Andrés and the truth is that they allowed me to study at night to continue training with the first team, then also in certain situations I always had my parents by my side, my mother always He had words that were necessary for me at that moment, I remind him of the most important one, don’t worry son, if you fail when you are in Madrid here you will always have a plate of food, because that left me very calm and my father, as he He has dedicated himself to sport, he has been a judo teacher, national coach, national referee, black belt examiner, because he has transmitted the values ​​of judo to me and they are useful for everything, they are useful for soccer and they are useful for to life, which has to do with work, humility, performance, respect for rivals. He has not been able to explain to me how to place a barrier or how to guess a penalty, but he did leave me a note on my desk from a very young age when I left for Madrid at the age of 16 and he had to come here, he He left a note where he spoke of these things simply that they were values ​​of the sport that I believe that judo takes to the maximum expression”.

Finally, Santi Cañizares explains what judo gave him to apply it to football at the highest level. “My years where I do judo, from the age of six, are fundamental in my life. First, because the judo teachers, including my father, but all in common, are very humble people, they are people with a lot of respect for sport in general, with a lot of respect for judo. And then they always transmitted to you, well, humility, effort, work, performance, respect for rivals. If they are better than you, then study them, learn from them. If they are worse than you, do not trust. And all the values ​​that encompass sports, perhaps less media coverage, which are done for more vocation, because they don’t feed, like judo, well they are excellent”

“It gave me the power to have a lot of strength in my hands, which allowed me to have a lot of skill when blocking. One of my best conditions is that I held the ball very well, or that, for example, in corner kicks on many occasions, not leaving the ball dead”, says Cañizares, who points out that “in judo, for example, Well, the main thing, not to compete, is the fight for grip. So, well, you have to have skill, dexterity in your hands and strength to grab because if you grab a rival better, then you have a lot of cattle. And then, obviously, the falls. The goalkeeper, then, throws himself to the ground many times. So, there are days when the fields are very soft and I remember my time in Vigo when it was cold, it could be raining at many times of the year, but you didn’t hurt yourself because the field was always wet, it was soft, but, in Valencia, for example, or during my time in Mérida, we often went to coach and the field was frozen, but you had to put your hips against the ground there. From the first thing in the morning and several times. So, judo also taught me, well, obviously, to position my body, to control my body with respect to the ground, falls and so on. For me judo was fundamental”.

Finally, Cañizares tells an anecdote with his father when he had to take an exam for a belt. “We were all reviewing the agenda of the book. And there was something that nobody understood because it was the most complicated. So I said, don’t worry, if he’s going to ask me that, since I’m his son, it’s not going to be that someone thinks he’s going to give me the change of belt for the nose. And he was asking me.

“Well, what my father was trying to do here was that nobody, that honor was above all else. Nobody thought that if my son went from blue belt to blue brown it was because he was my son. In front of everyone it was the most difficult exam and if not, he would go home and be punished ”, he ends.