Alejandro Francés (Zaragoza, 2002) will not forget this season. At just 18 years old, he made a dent in the club of his life, the Saragossa, and helped save him from relegation to Primera RFEF after overcoming “very screwed up situations.” Performance that earned him the call of Luis de la Fuente for the Spanish Under-21 team, a “gift” that, as he tells in an interview with EFE, is still not believed.
And that can be even bigger. Discharge due to sanction of Hugo Guillamón In the semifinals of the European against Portugal, he places him as the natural option to replace him and thus increase his dream year.
Question: You make your debut in a squad of the U21s. Did the call surprise you?
Answer: The truth is that it did surprise me. I left to play a game and the next day, while I was having a quiet breakfast at home, my mother called me half crying and telling me if she had seen Twitter because Luis de la Fuente had called me for this call (laughs). At first I did not believe it and the truth was that it was a super beautiful moment with my family. Now I have put the account of the football team on Twitter in the foreground (laughs).
Q: You have had to live a strange first call due to the positive of Jon Moncayola. How did you experience it?
A: It has cut us a lot. I have been confined because I was with him and I did not leave the room for a day. It's very rare, very rare. I hope the pandemic passes soon and we can return to a normalcy that we all wish for. After that lack of refinement, it is a very nice and very good group.
Q: Did you already know Luis de la Fuente?
A: As I was already in the U19, sometimes he came to see us. He called me before coming to Madrid and we talked quietly. Then before coming to Slovenia we also had a talk about how he liked me to play. I am so happy to be here.
Q: What does the coach ask of you?
A: He asks me to be calm, that I can contribute a lot to this team. Let him do it like in Zaragoza; He corrects me sometimes because he defends differently here, he focuses on getting the ball out and above all on a hierarchy of command that is essential for the coaching staff.
Q: Time goes by very fast. He started the season in the second team of Zaragoza and ends up settling in the first team until the call of the sub-21. How are you living it?
A: They have been constant emotions. At the beginning I was going to be going up and down the first team, but due to injuries and covid I had an opportunity and I knew how to take advantage of it. I have been growing a lot in football this year. And the under-21 has been a gift that I still can't believe.
Q: You have La Romareda, the Zaragoza stadium, tattooed on you. How does this tattoo come about?
A: I wore it with my mother, I wanted to with the whole family, but it didn't fit in my arm, which has been a fundamental support for me, going to La Romareda, which has been where I have been since I was little. It's been a pretty tough season because I've been at Zaragoza all my life and I'm just another Zaragoza player. We had a really fucked up time because we were down and we were drowning in qualifying.
Q: It takes getting used to seeing Zaragoza fighting not to be relegated in the Second Division, it seems like a small goal for a historic club.
A: Well, at the beginning of the season we did not have that objective, but there were a series of circumstances that we had to change that approach from wanting to promote to fight for permanence. I do not know what is better to grow, because when you are in direct ascent, things come out much more, you are more confident, but when you are fighting for permanence and seeing that things do not go much for you, you have to be very strong mentally not bring you down; We have been through very screwed-up situations and the team knew how to react. Thank God we were able to save ourselves.
Q: How important has the figure of Juan Ignacio Martínez, with experience in the elite, been to reactivate the team?
A: We have been super good. The dynamics have changed us. He knew how to take the controls of the team, put it together, believe in three basic concepts and grow from them. We knew how to carry it out and it has been the main reason. In addition, he has managed to handle us very well mentally to overcome difficult moments. There were many players in the squad who did not count and he has known how to put them in the team dynamics.
Q: Is having overcome these adversities and maintaining the category already an impulse for next season to fight for promotion?
A: Yes. As far as possible, for young kids who have been in this squad, it will come in handy for the future and I hope it will help us keep the team and so that next year, with a couple of signings To be able to think about going up to the First Division, which is what the Zaragoza fans deserve and also us.