He was one of the greatest promises of La Masía of Barcelona in Spain, he was coached by Pep Guardiola and shared a squad with Lionel Messi, but he was never able to demonstrate in First Division the qualities that led him to the Spanish National Team when he was a teenager and at 28 years old. he retired. He was tired of football. He had stopped enjoying himself.
After leaving the sport, the forward, who had been a starter in the 2008 European Under-17 Championship in which Spain was champion, works as an ontological coach and, at 32 years old, tries to ensure that others do not suffer what he experienced . “Everything happened to me very quickly. I was 15 years old and I was playing with 18-year-olds at Barça. I started to feel responsibility, pressure and I realized that this is not just a game. When it became something professional, a job, I stopped enjoying football,” he confessed in an interview with The Athletic.
In the Blaugrana team he played just five games between 2008 and 2010, all of them for the Catalonia Cup or friendlies, and shared the playing field with figures such as Xavi Hernández, now the team’s coach, Andrés Iniesta and Sergio Busquets. With Messi, coincidentally, he never met in a meeting, but they were part of the same team.
However, without having had official matches in the Barcelona first team, after having lost ground even in Juvenil A as several younger boys, such as Nolito, Cristian Tello and Jonathan Dos Santos, were beginning to get more minutes, he left. in search of other opportunities and ended up in Milan as a free person. At the same time, some of his teammates from the Inferiores, such as Thiago Alcántara and Sergi Roberto, had already settled in First Division.
At the Rossoneri he also did not achieve continuity and only played 47 games in the youth team. But after having lived at La Masia in what he considers to be his best time, he revealed the reasons for never being able to shine: “I always remember when (then AC Milan teammate Mauro) Tassotti told me: ‘Adri, you are very good, but you need to play calmer.’ And I said: ‘How? “I want to but I don’t know how.”
After that he went on loan for six months to Real Zaragoza, but he couldn’t perform either. He returned to Milan and at the age of 21 he was released without having made his debut in Serie A. Since then his career began a decline. He was in Girona (then in La Liga 2), Albacete, Espanyol B and Lugo. Being burdened with being the star of Spanish soccer was something he could never handle. “I always tried to recover that feeling of enjoyment. They called me the best player in Europe when he was 17 years old. He asked me: ‘Why am I not the best player now?’ “I couldn’t understand it and lacked the ability to deal with it in the right way,” he noted.
It was only in 2018 when his life began to take the turn that led him to this present. That year he went to play for Delhi Dynamos in the Indian Super League at the initiative of former La Masia coach Josep Gombau. There he began a process of retrospection. “I started studying during my stay in India, looking for tools for myself. I saw that the people there had a much better emotional balance and awareness. And during my own search, I realized that I could help others, especially with my own experience,” he told The Athletic.
After the coronavirus pandemic he returned to Barcelona and put on the third division CE L’Hospitalet shirt. At the same time, he began to advise his former teammates, including Álvaro Morata, who came from Real Madrid, but they met in the Spanish team.
“I got into this because I saw the lack that the athlete in general had. I was Barcelona’s promise par excellence, I was going to take on the world and, because I didn’t know how to manage that, I had many injuries and moments of great frustration that made me “They generated discomfort that I didn’t know how to do,” he said in dialogue with Marca in October 2023.
“Many players contact me, not because of a problem, an injury or not having been chosen,” he confessed in statements to The Athletic and added: “Many perform at a six out of 10, after three years in the same club, and they want to perform at a nine: ‘What is happening? Why am I not capable of more?’ Then we go through a process, analyzing the current situation. From there, we put the pieces together, every day, every week, to improve.”
In addition to Morata, who publicly acknowledged that Carmona helped him overcome his nerves and doubts in the game, the former Barcelona player also helped the Brazilian Arthur Melo and Borja Mayoral, among many others. Regarding what the way of working consists of, he concluded: “We constantly visualize what we will do tomorrow and the day after. Repeating the moment: ‘How I want it to happen. So that, when it arrives, it is closer to happening the way I want it to happen.’”
2024-04-23 00:45:55
#story #Adriá #Carmona
