Juan Antonio Anquela (Linares, Jaén, 1957), an authoritative voice in football, says that he probably won’t see Ibiza-Oviedo this Saturday. He does not say who he is going with, but it is intuited by his affection for the blue team. At Ibiza, the last team he coached, this season, he lasted only four games: three defeats and a draw. Three days after the match, Anquela, who spent a season and a half at Oviedo, reflects on the world of football and the role of coaches.
–What was found in Ibiza?
–I knew where I was going and I arrived with a tremendous illusion. We thought we were going to get ahead, but we didn’t have the necessary results and our patience ran out very soon.
-Why so soon?
I don’t know, I have no idea. The week before we went to play against the Villarreal subsidiary, we had all the confidence in the world. Or so they told us. We lost 1-0 and that same day they told me it was over. We were five points out of relegation I think, but that’s what they told me.
–How do you explain it?
-Well, I do not know. They sign you as a revulsion and they think they are going to win games as soon as they arrive. Sometimes they are achieved and other times not. The last time, in Alcorcón, it happened to me. When things were complicated there was always calm, but other times…
Was it your worst experience?
No, I have experienced very complicated situations. We saved Alcorcón, we fought until the last second and the following year we lasted eight games. I don’t understand those things. Do you know what’s up? That in football there are people who command more than the coach and they want it not to splash them.
– Now the coaches last very little, let them tell you.
-We know that well. And we are used to it, but before it was not so wild. In Alcorcón it took us five years to make a team. We had good, bad and very bad times. When we arrived we were almost in the Third Division and then we went up, getting to play the play-off. But then the sports director and the coach went hand in hand.
– Now they don’t go anymore?
–There are teams that don’t even tell you the reasons. They let go: “This is what it is.” We proceeded differently and planned. In football you have to adapt, you can’t live from the past.
Do you watch a lot of football?
Yes, but because I like it. I see more Second than First and I have time for everything because now I have a life that I couldn’t do before. I am very calm, enjoying the family. But I miss football a lot. I am many years old and I have been in a locker room since I was 18. I was everything: player, coach… Even sports director at Jaén.
-And so?
-Well, that, he was a sports director. But there came a time when they told me: “We are going to throw out the coach.” And I said: “I brought this one.” And then they kicked me out. Two seconds it took! It was Juan Carlos Álvarez, who by the way is from Asturias.
–But you have more bench wood than offices.
–If I were a sports director, the coaches would enjoy it, because I wouldn’t do anything without their consent. I watched all the training sessions and didn’t comment on anything. I have never told him put this one or put the other one.
–Have they told you?
Yes, they have told me, subtly. And every time you do an alignment something happens.
And how is that managed?
-Well, you fight, but you are putting things in the suitcase. That happens here and there, everywhere.
What do you think Cervera?
–He is a very normal person, his curriculum is there. He was promoted to Cádiz, he has been in the First Division and doing well. He was seven years. But now we are in the hands of the players and we have to try to connect with the dressing room, which is very complicated.
-By?
–Footballers are of another paste, like society. You just had to look at the ones from before… The ones from now are more complicated, neither worse nor better, but more complicated. The feeling of belonging is less and in the end it is paid. Before a game was over, they lost and the faces were to see them. This is like society, there is no more. Values have been lost in football.
-You were blamed in Oviedo for your supposed lack of ambition to repeat the 50 points…
Ha ha ha, you have to laugh. It’s that people misinterpreted things. I said that this was the first objective: to find four worse than you. Look at Málaga, which was playing in the Champions League not long ago. I used to say that first you had to find four worst ones and then, if you reach 50 with two months to go, you can do more ambitious things. The goal changes day by day.
-He was persecuted by that sambenito.
–He always followed me, but time puts everyone in their place. I didn’t say that to justify myself, my objective was to play for the promotion and if we had done it, I would face the biggest challenge of my life because that city and that team were willing.
–Would you renew Cervera?
–I am not the one who has to say it, it is Oviedo who has to know. Cervera is a calm man and he knows where he is in the square. You can’t buy experience, but now there are many who speak with prim words, but knowing and saying things by his name is already more complicated. Now they go to a press conference and prepare it.
-Well, you also prepared them.
–Yes, but everything I prepared changed, because it gave me free rein.
Will you watch the game?
–I don’t think so, possibly I can’t at that time. You know how I feel about that team. I was in Ibiza for three days and in Oviedo for two years.
2023-04-19 18:05:18
#personal #Anquela #Oviedo #50point #label #but..
