Those who were there say that the faces of Luis Enrique and its coaching staff but, above all, the faces of the footballers minutes after losing to Japan They were not, no, the reflection of defeat but the reflection of having been eliminated when, curiously, they had just achieved a feat that did not seem easy: to continue in the world and go to the round of 16 falling through the sweet part of the table.
But both the coaches and the players offered faces of serious, very serious defeat and, above all, of not understanding what had happened to them. Already in the last quarter of an hour of the clash with Germany, the coach pointed out that his players had lacked a point of weight, experience, pause, temper, knowing what to do and how to do it. The night in Japan, that is, Thursday night, he spoke of something worse: he spoke of panic, he spoke of ten minutes “in which the rival, if he had needed to put three in, he would put them in.”
hard blow
“Spain had started the World Cup magnificently well, better than anyone, knowing how and with whom they wanted to play and, now, along the way they have lost all the good things they had gained and that, in a short competition, is not so easy to recover, to come back, to feel again. Confidence, security, determination, knowing how to do it are not easy to acquire and, from what we have seen, it is quite easy to lose,” said the international goalkeeper. Santi Canizares. “I only know that, in South Africa, when we were champions, we appeared in the round of 16 recovering from a bad start, coming from less to more; Now we face Morocco, a very tough rival, who if they come after us can do us a lot of damage because we are not used to that, coming from more to less, without the confidence of then and, of course, without the confidence gained with the win against Costa Rica& rdquor ;, comments the scorer poly corner.
But Luis Enrique has everything planned, so much so that, in one of his ‘twitches, he acknowledged that he feels much more comfortable and secure in moments of crisis, handling problems. “I must be such an asshole & rdquor ;, he said. Trace the mood of his boys, who appeared in training yesterday (they changed the holiday to today) with a slightly more smiling face, because the ‘mister’ had told them in the locker room that “there are others who are worse off because or not They didn’t even get here or they already left, like Germany & rdquor ;. And at night he was able to add Uruguay, fired by South Korea.
But it is clear that both Luis Enrique and his psychologist Joaquin Valdes work has accumulated. It is obvious that if you choose soldiers, instead of the best or those who are in the best shape, you risk that some of them lack the experience and the grounds necessary for a competition of this level, although you ensure obedience and good faces. What is evident is that, in a World Cup, you are not going to learn, you must go with the lesson learned and it seems that, being the third youngest team in the World Cup, Spain must drag some weak point in terms of not know how to master certain moments of the game and the competition.
Joaquín Valdés, the psychologist who has been with Luis Enrique for 12 years, is, according to the coach, fundamentally “his” psychologist
Despite the fact that his performance, Valdés said, is permanent “as an observer”, the truth is that the psychologist has, these days, completely stretched out on his couch the entire team, including the coach, who, as he acknowledged, years ago , in the documentary “The men of Lucho & rdquor;, from Barça TV and TV-3, “a psychologist is, above all, for me, and blessed psychologist! He is the only one I can put up with and can put up with. I want him to be constantly by my side and help me manage stressful situations, which, in this job, are very many.” The anecdote from that time when Luis Enrique came to offer, to more than one journalist, the services of his psychologist “in case you need it, I’ll lend it to you, I’ll lend it to you” is well known.
Luis Enrique, who acknowledged that he could have suffered a heart attack having learned that Spain was eliminated for three minutes on the last day of his World Cup group, must face a marathon on Tuesday (4:00 p.m., against Morocco), a delicate situation also for his soldiers, coming from 10 minutes of panic.
Valdés, also from Asturias, 45, a black belt in judo, a teacher and who has been with Luis Enrique for 12 years, will have spoken in the last few hours with the heavyweights of the national team to gauge the state of mind of the boys. “My mission & rdquor ;, he recently recounted, “is to optimize the performance of the players. Luis Enrique, to whom I don’t comment on what I’m talking about or what happens with the players because he would lose their trust, attaches great importance to my figure and the footballers immediately grasp that & rdquor ;.
let go of mourning
“I don’t think that the fundamental problem, at the moment, are the doubts that a defeat like the one that occurred against Japan generates in you,” he said last night, in World Goal, Andoni Zubizarreta, a good connoisseur of the idiosyncrasies with which Luis Enrique works and, of course, with enough experience in situations similar to those that the team is experiencing now in Qatar. “The problem is that you started by thrashing Costa Rica, that you continued drawing, in a correct and balanced match, with Germany and, suddenly, you see yourself out of the World Cup and you’re in, not because of your result, but because of another team’s. And that can certainly generate certain doubts, certain elements for reflection, about what things you were doing well and did not do. But that is what the coach is for.”
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When Zubi is asked what button Luis Enrique and, of course, his technical team, including Joaquín Valdés, will touch to recover the team’s spirits, the legendary international goalkeeper points out that “the first thing to do is let the time, take a break, however small it may be, to first realize that, despite everything, we are classified, rest and, from that moment on, see how we can take flight and prepare for the match against Morocco with guarantees of win it”
That pause time that Zubizarreta suggests is what experts in this type of situation call “going through mourning”. Then, without a doubt, the moment will come for the psychologist to intervene, who will accompany Luis Enrique to prepare, not only the analysis of the defeat against Japan, but also the speech to be developed in these days in preparation for the clash, in the round of 16, against Morocco.