The alarm clock rings. It’s five in the morning and Oriol Alsina gets up to start preparing for a new day at the market. As hard as it may seem, working in the family business specializing in the distribution of towels (Synera Textile) has no point of comparison with the life he led a few months ago when he was a coach. They have been almost 30 years dedicated to football, both on the benches and as sports director, and combining it as best he could by working for the company, which have deprived him of many important moments with his loved ones. To better understand: He was not able to attend the wedding of any of the brothers. Although this is just an example. Therefore, it was necessary to stop.
Alsina was able to go to her granddaughter’s one-year-old birthday, even though the party took place on a Sunday. It was such an extraordinary event for the family that even her father, the girl’s 85-year-old great-grandfather, was moved to be able to celebrate life together.
The legendary coach from Girona decided not to renew with him Badalona Future -club to which he had previously been closely linked when he had the nomenclature of Llagostera and Costa Brava– this 2023/24 season, despite making “a second play-off round”, for “personal reasons”. Alsina wanted to enjoy being with her family and regain her enthusiasm to accept new football challenges in the not too distant future.
“This time is going well for me to disconnect and erase, focusing on and helping my family’s work (Synera Tèxtil). It’s been 30 years in a row without stopping, thinking only about football. I had the possibility of continuing to train Badalona Futur, but I needed to take some time away from doing anything related to all this. My intention is to extend this break until after Nadal», explains Alsina. Among his plans, there is an escape for Europa with his wife Isabel Tarragówho was president of Llagostera for many years and also of Costa Brava, an excursion to Montserratgo see the nephew who lives in Barcelona to play basketball, have a barbecue with friends or simply spend an afternoon on the couch at home without any kind of worry that can make you sleepy. In short, enjoy the small details.
“You can never say I will not drink of this water, but right now my intention is to relax these next few months and if from January something interesting comes up at a sporting, economic or social level then it will be the time to consider it”, he adds. Alsina was this morning, Tuesday, September 5, at Palamós marketwhere, coincidences of life, two seasons ago he trained alongside the now-defunct Costa Brava of Segona RFEF who played as a local in the Municipal Palamós-Costa Brava. He and his wife, Isabel, changed the name of the club, initially Llagostera and which went on to earn a place in Second Division A, when it had to move from the town of Girona in 2021. Later, in 2022, they transferred it to a group of entrepreneurs from Badalona. Before that, he had also been Girona’s sporting director. He signed Pablo Machin. Now, however, all that is history.
“A year and a half ago we had a release. The only thing I did last season was train. I only had to worry about preparing the players as best as possible and planning the games to get the best out of the team. It was very good for me because I stopped having three million problems to solve”, he says. Alsina insists that being the top manager of a club in a town of 8,000 inhabitants involves “an enormous wear and tear”: “It has happened to few people and I think it is difficult for them to understand me and my family. At the Lobster it was a lot of things all the time. Something as simple as someone coming to ask you on a match day that ‘how come the toilets were dirty’. First I was the coach of the team… Apart from having to earn income so that everyone could make ends meet. It was a job that took up a full-time job.”
The value of weekends
During all these years he has dismissed them because his priority was football, but currently Alsina values the possibility of “having weekends” free. “At my granddaughter’s birthday everyone said to me ‘what are you doing here?’ They are all used to me missing celebrations of nephews, brothers, parents, grandparents… In 95% of the cases I couldn’t go because I was traveling with the team or concentrated because we had a match at the weekend”, he regrets. “I have gained a lot of quality of life, peace of mind and being able to enjoy things that are normal for people but that are new to me. We’re not talking about a year or two, but 30… I had completely different habits and rhythm of life,” he points out.
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“I have always told my footballers that to compete at the highest level you need to have The tiger’s gaze like the Rocky Balboa. I had lost it lately. The stoppage is going really well for me to get it back. It’s a process”, he says. Considering that football has been the engine of his life for 30 years, Alsina has not completely cornered him. “I try to watch matches of second, First RFEF i Second RFEF because I don’t want to lose the thread. I like it because I can follow players I coached when they were young and now they are in the elite, even playing in the Champions League. I didn’t have time before and it gives me a lot of satisfaction”, he concludes.
2023-09-05 16:56:07
#benches #market #years #football
