Juanele and that unforgettable dribble against Hierro: “Zamorano pulled my hair and told me: ‘Baby, what are you doing? This is Madrid'”

Remembering anecdotes is one of the most common routines among friends. In one of those was Juan Castaño Quirós, Juanele (Gijón, 1971) when he walked along the Wall with Fernando Asensio, “Chumi”. “Why don’t we make a book with all this?” they proposed. “The idea had been around me for three or four years. We started writing on April 23 of last year. It turned out to be something very beautiful,” explains El Pichón in his meeting with LA NEW SPAIN, while he holds the result in his hands. More than 200 pages of a work titled “My truth”, a book “a little rebellious, like me.” “It’s not that many lies were told about me, but I had the need to tell the truth about my life, above all, for my daughter, María,” he emphasizes. The prologue bears the signature of another sporting idol: Luis Enrique.

His autobiography is pure Juanele. Not only because of the content of its pages, but because of the way in which it has seen the light. Neither has he had a publisher to carry it out nor has he put himself in the hands of a professional to write his story, beyond “a person who has been in charge of correction work and has given it a bit of shape when everything was already made”. As in soccer, El Pichón fled from bosses, trusted his talent and let everything flow. “You’re going to like it. There are many anecdotes, many,” he says with a half smile.

He recounts from his beginnings “when he was 6 years old, at Roces. Also everything I enjoyed from 10 to 18 years old at Veriña, then Sporting…”. In red and white, he keeps the 1993-94 season, in which “we beat all the greats in El Molinón.” From there he tells in the book how he experienced his “hesitation” towards Fernando Hierro from within and other details. “Zamorano pulled my hair from behind and told me: ‘Baby, what are you doing? We are Madrid’. Then Míchel started doing it too,” he remembers, laughing. Attempts to unsettle him gave the Pigeon wings.

There is also a special section for that 1994 World Cup in which he did not play. “It was true that my teammates sent me to buy hamburgers and Clemente caught me. I was very young, the veterans asked you that and how could you not do it? But then the coach put the cross on me. I lacked support from Clemente, a lot of support “I didn’t deserve to be left on the bench,” defends Juanele, and then slips that “more things happened than are told in the book.” He does not forget other chapters of his career, such as that second leg of the UEFA semi-final, against Schalke 04, which was lost due to an accumulation of cards. “Perhaps if we had played we would be talking about something else,” but what bothers him most, he says, are false myths about his lifestyle.

“What bothered me the most in my career was when they said I left the day before the games. I never did that. Not at Sporting, nor at Tenerife, nor at Zaragoza. Going out, I went out, yes, but it never had any influence in my performance,” he says. To clarify everything, in “My Truth” he openly addresses the depression that he suffered in Zaragoza. “A family problem arose because Paco Flores had removed me from the team,” he explains. Also how a doctor “with a lot of history behind him” later diagnosed him with bipolar disorder during a visit to Madrid. “It is likely that these problems have already been with me since I was a child. I think the book can also help people who see themselves in the same situations,” he says. He, too, does not escape from the stage he had to spend in prison. “You can’t learn anything from that. I didn’t learn anything positive,” he concludes. For everything else, he invites you to buy his book, which will go on sale, at a price of 25 euros, as soon as it is presented. The forecast is to do it next week, in Gijón, at which time it will be detailed where it can be purchased.

2024-02-03 03:00:46
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