It is the week of the year in which American football stops the world. is the Super Bowl, the great final of the NFL that will determine the next owner of the Lombardi in the next morning from Sunday to Monday. The most watched event in the stars and stripes giant. A champion who will justify an entire sports career. Because ‘football’ is life.
Spain’s distance from American football cannot be misleading. The NFL captivates and forms. It is the vision that the main stakeholders have, their players. TO Roberto Garza (Texas, United States, 1979) changed his life. He started in the 2007 Grand Final on the offensive line of one of the founding fathers of the competition, the Chicago Bears.. “It changed me. If you win, you become champion. You’ve dreamed of the Super Bowl since you were a child. And you end up seeing yourself there, in the tunnel, with your teammates. You enter the pitch and everything lights up to feel the emotion, energy and vibe of the match. It’s like a child’s dream,” he recounted in the MARCA newsroom.
Garza is a voice of experience. He played and now you can stream it. He does it at the Mini Monsters Clinic, the campus that the Chicago Bears bring to Spain with headquarters in Barcelona and yesterday at the Osos Stadium in Madrid together with another sports banner, Saúl Craviotto. It is for the little ones, who are made to participate in a sport based on feelings. “We teach that everything you dream of can be achieved. Because you practice, you tackle and you will talk to your parents about it. Afterthose children can continue to grow”, says the player with roots in Mexico.
The Bears, the Spanish NFL team
The Campus Mini Monsters Clinic is the representation of how the Chicago Bears bring the NFL to Spain. Within the initiative of the league, the team from the ‘Windy City’ wants to connect the sport and its values with the little ones. “It’s a camp to learn football and, especially, to live a healthy life. Yes, the goal of many is to play in the NFL or be an Olympian., but without a routine, discipline and healthy habits such as eating well, sleeping and exercising, it will never come. We teach all of that. Physical preparation, training and then for the first time teaching the sport. It’s amazing to see how they have fun without knowing the sport. Without having touched an oval ball in his life”, he explains.
For ’63’ everything begins and ends in that battle in which his Bears fell to the Indianapolis Colts of myth Payton Manning. The last time a historic led Chicago to a final. “The city loves us. Because the NFL was created there and the families are fans. Now they live in worse times, but they will always be faithful,” he says. Times pass, but that DNA remains. “It was a team that won, had fun and worked. That’s how I managed to learn values that I use in my life. Go out and fight for your teammates and win again,” she adds.
“I played against Brady”
The time has changed. The NFL that Garza left after a decade-and-a-half career is very different from the current one. And, curiously, one of the last loopholes hung up the helmet a few days ago. Tom Brady, big words. They say that both friends and enemies of ’12’ hold him in special esteem, and Garza is also in that vein. “I only played against him a couple of times. In 2007, in Chicago, we faced their Patriots in a huge snowfall. You couldn’t see it and every 15 minutes they cleaned everything. We thought we would win without a problem. He scored 52 points for us. Won. He always does. Under snow, sun in Tampa or rain,” he recalls.
We thought we were going to win… and Brady scored 52 points for us
Brady is unbeatable. “He is unique because of the way he prepares, trains and prepares his body. Add to this the study and the level for two decades. He has never been seen before… and it is the mark of how to play American football. For that champion routine “, he specifies.
Brady was the representative, but the sport itself also changes. He explains himself with facts like contact. In senior year, concussions spark serious discussions about dangerousness. “Sport is rough and tough. There will always be blows. But with the advancement of medical techniques, it will be watched, monitored and managed to limit the inconveniences to the maximum”, sentence.
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