“Ancelotti and Bordalás marry the styles of Madrid and Valencia”

An open book. Santi Cañizares (Madrid, 51 years old) enjoys talking about football. It is his life. It continues to be his life. His passion. Gone are his 23 years as a professional measuring every inch of the three sticks of his goal (Celta, Real Madrid and Valencia in the First Division). Now he has become a successful communicator who also puts the scalpel in a game that conducts an interview with the ease of one who has been at the microphone all his life.

We are already involved in the League and we are all worried because our Championship is losing cache and important players, like Messi… after Cristiano and Neymar.

We are not the richest and that means that we do not have the most sought-after players in the market. But I believe in talent that is coming and that is already there. We have footballers who can step up and become top-level players. I'm not afraid of the level of the League. I'm watching good football, we have very good coaches: Simeone, Bordalás, Lopetegui, Emery… We are going to enjoy this year, we don't have to regret so much.

Equality can compensate for that lack of stars …

If we understand Cristiano, Messi, Neymar, Mbappé by stars … it is clear that the first three did a lot of good for our Championship and it is a tremendous opportunity for young people who are going to have an opportunity that they would not have if there were those players of whom we have spoken. We are safe with the good trainers that we have and the talent that we have in our soccer schools. It is something that has to do with wages. The National Team itself is full of players who act abroad. It hurts me to see Ferran Torres, who has 10 years of great football ahead of him, or Dani Olmo … but they are the circumstances and what we have to do is make more 'Ferranes' and more 'Olmos'.

What we have been lucky enough to experience with Cristiano and Messi for more than a decade is already part of the history of football. There have never been two contemporary players in the same Championship competing day after day in two clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Football always surprises us and that is why we must respect it and not think that great players are not going to come out anymore. It seems that in a reasonable time it could be like that, but it also seemed that there were no longer going to be great stars at the level of Maradona, Cruyff, Pelé … and they emerged. It was a beautiful duel. They fed back to each other. The performances of one motivated the other. Messi has a talent that is not comparable to anyone, but Cristiano has an ambition that equals any soccer player in talent. We could never imagine that two footballers were going to emerge who were going to score 50 goals per season and we have seen it for several years and twice. I want to believe that in football the best moments are yet to come.

Since you hung a goal for yourself in the early 1990s, soccer has changed by leaps and bounds.

A lot and the goalkeeper position, I won't even tell you. Above all, the way of competing has changed. Now you compete with less positive aggressiveness. The footballer is very much protected. The VAR has helped especially in the expulsions without the ball. Character has been lost. Before football was harder, there was much more contact. And if we talk about the goalkeepers, it has nothing to do with it. We worked the technique, the blocks, the exits in the aerial game, the position in the goal …

Now almost no one blocks a ball, but there are gamers with their feet.

Now the goalkeepers have to measure 1.90. Those of 1.80 give the feeling that they are useless when we have had in this country Arconada, Miguel Ángel, García Remón, Ablanedo … all international. Now there is talk of goalkeepers who play well with their feet and that implies that in training they spend more time on this than learning the goalkeeper technique and it shows in both senses. Nobody panics when they give the ball to the goalkeeper, as it happened with me who at 23 years old told me that I had to play with my foot and I said, but how is this? Let's imagine Zubi or Ablanedo who caught them already at 30. Today's goalkeepers have been playing it with their feet since they were 7 years old, but the blocks, the deflections, the dexterity to move the ball away from a second chance, they no longer work as much .

All the new rules have seemed to point directly to the goalkeeper position.

Yes, but I think it has been to the benefit of football. It was a tremendous punishment not being able to play the ball with the hand in the assignments of the partner, but nobody disputes that rule anymore. It makes the game much more dynamic, it slows down less. Everything that has been done made us feel very bad. We had to adapt to very difficult circumstances, but everything was for the benefit of the game and it is well done.

If we take the classification it turns out that his two soul teams, Valencia and Real Madrid are first and face each other on Sunday …

I lack the Celta that gives me a lot of dislikes. Valencia and Real Madrid are going through a good time. I am liking Madrid because it is showing itself as a team faithful to its principles, attacking a lot, scoring goals. Of course you need to defend more, but you can't be everywhere. It is the identity of the club of all life. I like that attacking football, although it is true that Ancelotti has a great margin of improvement when it comes to defending. For me he is a candidate for everything, as always.

Valencia is unknown …

I like Bordalás's style of play for Valencia. It also suits what this team has always been. Competitive. Here we say that he has to be rough and cupbearer. Regardless of the talent it has had in some eras, it has always been more competitive when it has not conceded spaces, when it has been well placed tactically, when it has disputed each ball and was shown as an uncomfortable team that no one wanted to see and what if you scored a goal there was no way to tie it. This season the players have a commitment, but it is not a complete squad, although Bordalás is capable of making a team with eleven shirts. He is a master at making them compete. Ancelotti and Bordalás marry the idea of ​​the game of both clubs during their history. Ancelotti gives the player confidence and well-being and has complicity with them. And this in a talented team is a lot, because the talent is there.

You have always been very Bordalás. Why, for taking the opposite?

Because I don't get carried away by the currents, because I like people who meet goals. I spent years saying that Getafe had talent, but it was indolent and did not compete as it should, but when Bordalás began to compete, it became an uncomfortable team and reached where it had never done in Europe. The criticism he has does not seem fair to me, just as it does not seem fair to me that there are coaches who have a very placid speech, which feels very good, but they do not meet their objectives. I've always liked looking at the rankings more than looking at the opinion. The classification fools you a year. Many, no. It is difficult for Bordalás to see him fail in a team.

You had more than 20 coaches in your career… Were there too many and that is why you never wanted to be a coach?

No, no, no … There were so many due to the circumstances of football and because I stretched my career almost until I was 39 years old. I learned from everyone. With some I felt more comfortable because they trusted me and with others more uncomfortable because they did not trust and that in a goalkeeper is serious because you spend the whole year without playing. When I was a player, I did have a vocation to be a coach. There was a time when he was part of a commission of players that fought with the Federation so that the footballer did not have to go through the University and could take a conventional course, that given their experience they could take reduced courses and obtain the title in a way more direct, to have subjects validated. I fought for it, but did not take the course. I stayed on the first level.

Why?

Because when I finished my career I considered that I wanted to have time to dedicate it to my family, and that football would not continue to steal my other passions, as it had happened until then. I did the athletic director course, but more for personal learning. I have never had an interest in working in a club because I know myself and I know that as I give myself I would dedicate myself completely again and I want to have a part of my life for my family and myself.

Of those twenty-something coaches you had, who do you stay with?

I have to stay with Rafa Benítez because he achieved a brutal performance with that Valencia. We won two leagues and a UEFA Cup. Also with Txetxu Rojo, who was the one who made me debut in First with Celta. Personally, he was very close to me at a very difficult time. He was a great friend who can be fully trusted. On a personal level it was blessed glory. I am not forgetting coaches like Ranieri, Cúper or Quique Sánchez Flores with whom I reached the zenith of my career. And I don't forget those who took me to the National Team. I never had continuity there, but Javi Clemente, from a very young age, counted on me, although for two years he was not a starter at Real Madrid and then Luis Aragonés who led me at 36 against all public opinion and also made me play my last game at the 2006 World Cup in Germany when the second goalkeeper was also Pepe Reina. Situation that buries the media current that said that he and I were getting along badly.

And he also had the privilege of working under Juanito's orders.

I was not forgetting. He and Caturla, whom I also had at Mérida, grabbed me by the chest to tell me that I was going to be a professional in First Division and I didn't believe it. They motivated me a lot. A shame about Juanito, it would have been without a doubt an incentive for our football. I enjoyed it 19 days and it was wonderful.

In his career there are more than curious situations. Win a Champions League with Real Madrid (1998) sitting on the bench and lose two with Valencia (2000 and 2001) as a starter.

The one on the bench was a 12-game Champions League in which I played the first six. And I also played more than half the starting league, but I had great competition in Bodo Illgner, who was a great goalkeeper and what happened could happen, that if at one point of the season I was not one hundred percent the coach could take advantage your energy. It could also determine that it was my last year at Real Madrid and we did not reach an agreement to renew. I wanted sports stability and at that time I was suspicious and that's why I left. It was a Champions League highly desired by Madrid fans after 32 years without achieving it and I remembered then that when Ramón Mendoza hired me in 94 the first thing he told me was that I had to help win the European Cup because it was the first objective.

His image on his knees crying at the San Siro in the second final against Bayern is one of the snapshots in the history of the competition.

They were two very different endings. The first against Real Madrid caught us by surprise. We were very fair in every way against a great rival. We weren't a team designed to reach those heights of the competition, but based on great games against Lazio in the quarterfinals and Barça in the semifinals we got into the final that came when the glass had overflowed. We couldn't compete to win it. It was different from Bayern, we had a more balanced squad, we competed very well and we deserved it as much as they did, but the figure of Khan appeared in the penalty shoot-out and we couldn't win it. We fell in another way, as worthy finalists. That is precisely why I cry in Milan and I do not cry in Paris, when we reached 90 there we had everything lost and I had all the game to realize that we were not going to win it. He had already suffered a lot during that match. In San Siro we saw ourselves as champions in many moments. We went ahead on the scoreboard, we went ahead on penalties. The possibility of putting Valencia's letters in gold escaped us and also we all knew then that it was going to be the last chance, that there was not going to be a third. Hopefully Valencia can have it in the future.

What we did not know then is that Cañizares did not have a coach inside, what he carried was a communicator …

I am glad that I am recognized as such because it is what I do now. When I decided to work in the media, the first thing I did was get rid of a stone that is necessary in former players. Since I had no motivation to work in a club, I just say what I see, even if I am wrong. I want to be authentic and I think I have a lot of cattle in relation to those who can cover up criticism and even use the media to later work in a club. As it is not my case, I always say what I think, always with respect, of course, and taking into account that I do not have all the information because I am not in contact with the teams. Our figure in the media is to try that the fan understand the game better through our experience and we are here to tell the good things and also those that are not done well. Sometimes it costs me because someone has been a partner or I have affection for them, but it is my current duty.

One last question. Now with your son Lucas, 18 years old, Castilla goalkeeper, do you suffer or enjoy?

I suffer, I suffer a lot … because he is a boy who works very well, who lives only for football, who takes care of himself, who does not go out, who deserves to go far and like all players he goes through delicate moments that he has to overcome. With what I have suffered, I have suffered more than I enjoyed in football, because I have really enjoyed when I have retired and people on the street in Valencia stop me and invite me to a coffee. When I was working I always had a problem and now I'm reliving them with Lucas. But he also gives me a lot of satisfaction because everyone who works with him speaks very well to me on a personal level and that is the most important thing as a father.