Born in Santa Pau in 1974, Pep Pagès he experienced the world of professional and semi-professional football in his own flesh. He wore the shirt of four clubs from the Girona counties: l’OlotGirona, Peralada and Fig treesand also played in other entity sets such as the Barça B, Castelló or Sant Andreu.
He has been teaching for more than twenty years, in theSchool Cor de Maria d’Olot, where he entered as a result of his football career: “When my father became ill, one of my priorities was to find a job as a teacher in Olot, and it turns out that Olot, which at that time was in Primera Regional, he made me a good offer. Then I ended up doing two seasons in Peralada. At the time I received the offer from Olot, I was 31 years old, I was playing for Sant Andreu and I had a good contract, and we had also moved up to Segona B, but there are priorities in life. I already had a teaching degree at that time and wanted to be close to home».
His sports career ended exactly where it had begun, and where he also claims to have had the best time: “Where I enjoyed playing football the most was during my beginnings, in the Third Division, when I was 16 years old with the ‘Olot because he played uninhibited, without any rules or pressure. As you enter the world of professional or semi-professional football, you play like a professional, as if it were a job, with conditions, the rules set by the coach, a tactic they propose to you that you may not believe in… It’s like another job and you have to keep doing it.”
From the youth team of Olot, Barça came looking for him to incorporate him into the subsidiary, which is why he had the possibility of making his debut in the world of professional football, in the Second Division. Pagès agreed at Barça C with Quique Cárcel and in Girona with Geli Dolphin and other colleagues who now lead, from the offices, the Girona club’s project in the First Division. He is considered a competitive player of sorts but within a regulation, which is why his relationship with professional football has been kept away from offices. “The world of football is a world of interests. You have to have a broad back and I’m not that kind of person. I don’t like to lie or deceive people, and I think that in this world you have to come across it too often”, explains Pagès.
However, he is still linked to football thanks to his son’s love of it, who plays in Infantil A del Bosc de Tosca, where Pagès is the second coach: “I love football. I have collaborated with the club where my son plays depending on the club’s needs and my availability.’ As a teacher, he usually advises his students when they ask him about his time at the Barça subsidiary, and he assures that he always tells them the same thing: “You can have the illusion of playing for Barça, but I advise you to study. I give more value to having studied than to having played at Barça”. Pagès is in favor of not cutting the wings of children’s dreams, although he believes that they should be guided and warned: “If my son had the illusion, I would let him try, but I would explain to him that the least he has a stone in his shoe will be kicked out and he will have to be brave enough to assimilate it”, says Pagès.
Pagès was part of the Figueres squad that reached the semi-finals of the King’s Cup l’any 2002. It was the first team in the third division of Spanish football (then Segona B, now Primera RFEF) to achieve a milestone equaled by Mirandés. The Empordanese, coached by Pere Gratacós, fell to Deportivo de la Coruña, which was champion the edition, but they had previously eliminated Barça in a single match in extra time, then they did the same with Osasuna, in the penalty shootout, with Novelda and, in the quarters, with Córdova. “That milestone made us more visible, but I’ve felt at ease at all the clubs I’ve been to”, he concludes.
2024-04-16 10:10:26
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