“If Atleti goes out to die at the Camp Nou, it will be invincible”

“Don't start there,” laughs Gonzalo Caballero before sitting down on the stool, throwing the bangs back and looking askance at his back. The immensity of the Metropolitan embraces him, the place from which Atlético 2020-21 will leave for Barcelona on Friday to play LaLiga. On the map, 5.2 kilometers separate him from the one in which Gonzalo almost lost his life a year and a half ago, to the bull Claverito. Everything will be united in their conversation, the one that talks about shared values, as if they were sewn in gold, as in that cape for a walk that he presented to the world in Las Ventas, 2014, as the Atlético bullfighter, feeling that has forged its way of being, in life and on the sand.

“That season I was lucky enough to be able to go with Atlético to a lot of away games. I saw him in Villarreal's field, in Malaga, against Betis, Sevilla, in Barcelona's winning La Liga, in London. I couldn't go to Lisbon because it was a Saturday and I was fighting on Monday in Las Ventas. And I remember that I saw the final with my father and the next day, training, I was very proud of what my team had done, I was more proud than ever to be from Atleti, and I asked Miguel Ángel (Gil) for that Atlético walking cape that I had seen in the museum to put on in Las Ventas. “They called him crazy, there were those who did not understand it (” because bullfighting is a very liturgical profession and , suddenly, going out there with that great Atleti shield because it had a great impact … “). But he couldn't help it, telling the world that passion that runs through his veins since he was a child, since his father took him for the first time from He shakes hands with Calderón. Hence that laugh that he cannot help when he hears the first question and his past as a Real Madrid youth squad.

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-And his mother tried to target all possible football teams to get the bull out of his head …

-Yes (laugh again). When I was three or four years old I used to say that I wanted to be a bullfighter. In fact, I had the short suit, my cape and my crutch and my mother signed me up for all the soccer teams she could. And the truth is that I did very well and ended up playing in the second team in the city.

-But…

-In fact, every time I went out to play a game in the old sports city, I would make an 'A' for Atleti when I stepped onto the field. I remember a discussion at my grandparents' house, who were from Atlético, they told my mother how was it possible that I was playing for Madrid. “It doesn't matter, every time he goes out he makes an 'A' for Atleti,” my father used to say. And my mother: “No, no, who makes the cross like bullfighters.” My father: “No, no, what does Atleti's 'A' do.” And I remember that they called me running to ask me. “No, mom, I do an 'A' for Atleti to apologize for what I'm doing,” he laughs. Na, it's a joke. My parents asked me to do the tests with Madrid and the truth is that it worked very well. It was a game that we won 4-1 and I scored all four goals. I played two or three years.

-And he went through the quarry of Inter Movistar, futsal. Until, at the age of 15, he saw José Tomás.

-It was a bullfight in Linares. The bull caught him and gave him a very strong goring. They made him a tourniquet and he endured in the square without making a pained face, a gesture. He blew me away. I believed that I was a super hero and the sensations that I received that day, I said to myself: “I want to be able to transmit this one day.” And that was the day I decided that I wanted to be a bullfighter and I left football and everything to embark on that dream.

A tourniquet with the 'Never stop believing' on the head

A dream full of ears, large doors and also horns, six of extreme gravity, like those last two in Las Ventas, the one a year and a half ago, in which he was dead for nine minutes; the one of 2017 in which he resisted standing with the 'Never stop believing' in his head. “I decided to make a tourniquet, my banderilleros tried to bring me inside, to the infirmary, because the blood was my dark and the very dark blood is from an important artery. But I had that threshold of pain very high because on top of the pain was dignity and honor and that is what made me fight. “Something that also explains why there are so many self-confessed rojiblancos bullfighters. Miguel Abellán, El Juli, López Simon, José Tomás … “The values ​​of bullfighting are a bit embodied in what it is to be from Atleti, at that point of maximum delivery. I have seen Atlético games at the Calderón or here, at the Metropolitano, that the team has lost and people came out happy because their team has given everything. And that is what makes us different. What we want is delivery. And bullfighting goes that way a bit: you manage to leave your mark when you are able to surrender, when you put your life at stake and are able to give the bull the greatest thing we have, our own being. And a bullfighter gives his life to the bull to be able to connect and generate emotions in the fan.. And I think that in that way the Atleti feeling is closely linked to bullfighting. “

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-Do you wear an Atlético amulet when you fight?

-Yes, always, since I started. In my chapel. I usually wear an Atlético jersey or tracksuit.

-Like when he was little and Atleti went down to Second, who asked his mother to wear the red and white to go to school.

-Yes. Sure, nowadays it is easier to be from Atleti. But then it was more complicated. The first game that I remember was I don't know if the year of the double, a game we won 3-0, against Compostela or against Tenerife, I remember seeing Quinton Fortune debut. He was four or five years old. Then the year I most remember feeling that Atleti feeling is the year we went down to Second, the year of Hasselbaink. After the match in Oviedo, I threw myself crying without consolation until the next day, when I got up and said to my mother: “Give me the Atleti shirt and I'm going to school with it.”

-At home you keep one of Tiago, for whom, in a way, it was an inspiration, as for you José Tomás.

– (Smile) Yes. In 2017 he sent me a message, super nice, while I was in the hospital, and he said: “You know that this afternoon I will return. This morning Cholo asked me if I wanted to play and at first I was going to say no, that it was better to wait, but I remembered everything you did the other day in the plaza, how you endured, with a tourniquet, and I said yes, I'm going to play. So I want someone to put the game for you in the hospital, because I want you to see me that it is thanks to you. I'm keeping the shirt for you because I want you to keep it ”. It is one of the messages that I have ever been most excited about.

Like that gesture by Godín, that year too, with his father, sick with cancer. “He asked me how I was doing and he told me:” Bring him to the field and when the game is over I'll send them down and we'll give him the shirt. ” And when the game ended, one of the last of the Calderón, and my father excited … It was a detail that I have remembered several times and that there is no way to thank, that they remain in a hole in your heart. My father, who had led me by the hand to the field. And that is what makes us different. And the day Atletico doesn't do that, we look like the other team in the capital that is wearing white. The Atleti the day it loses that, it will be able to win many titles but it will cease to be the Atleti“.

Nine minutes dead

He says it calmly, as when he talks about that goring a year and a half ago of the Claverito bull, in Las Ventas, 5.2 from the Metropolitan, in which he was dead for nine minutes. “When I went inside because I put my fist inside the wound, I caused hemostasis (the organism's ability to make the blood in a liquid state remain in the blood vessels), which the doctor in the Plaza de Las Ventas told me had saved me because of it. From the goring to the infirmary I lost three liters of blood. I noticed a spring of hot blood falling through my fist and at that moment I began to feel that I was drowning, when they began to intervene in the infirmary I fainted, they revived me and then sedated me and, at that moment, I said: “Tell my mother I love her ”. Unfortunately my father was gone, he passed away four years ago, “he explains.”At that moment the last feeling I had was of happiness for having given my life in the square in which I had grown up, the square of my dreams, the Plaza de Las Ventas and dignifying the word bullfighter. It is the greatest glory and the greatest dignity that there can be in this life. Dying devoted to your profession, to your dream, and that feeling of honor and pride is, saving the distance, a bit of the feeling that Atlético have had in defeats as tough as the Champions League finals “.

– Fernando Torres always says it. Atlético is knowing how to get up. One time. And another, and another, and another …

-Yes, it is true that mentally I have had delicate moments. Harder than this there is nothing. It is that that, like others, could make them leave, it makes us still be more of Atleti. After I was in the ICU for so long, 13 days, then another 13 on the ward, everything that had happened, being dead for nine minutes, injected something of my own being into myself that made me become even more of a bullfighter.

-In fact, his reappearance has already returned. Navalcarnero, May 29. In the hospital he was already thinking about what his outfit would be for today.

-Yes, although if I'm honest, in the ICU I did think about leaving. Being hooked up to a dialysis machine, 35 hour sessions … That's where I thought. I thought, no longer as a bullfighter but as a person, I was not capable of overcoming all that. Seeing my blood through a device, seeing it go in again… That was very hard. Mentally it has been a very great mental work. Coming back is a bit like being born again, coming back to life. The final, there is a phrase that José Tomás said: “Living is a circumstance, but fighting is a necessity.” And a bullfighter needs to fight, even if you do it in the field, that contact with the public is a bit like footballers say too, that playing with an empty door they feel a very big emptiness. Empty-door bullfighting makes no sense.

-Neither does football, but in your reappearance you will be able to have an audience and football, in recent days, has been denied again. Do you understand?

– It has cost us a lot of work to achieve it. The first day was May 2 in Madrid. In tennis there are people, in Second B, Women's football, I don't understand why there are no people in the team's matches in First, it doesn't make much sense. I know that Miguel Ángel (Gil) is fighting a lot for it. People really don't know what he suffers for Atleti. I have the opportunity to get to know him well, one day what he has done for Atleti will be valued. And now he is killing and fighting because the Atleti fans can be with his team.

-You have been in a game this season, against Celta, at the Metropolitano. How do you experience as a spectator a place so full that it is so empty?

-Yes, I went for a movie that I was shooting with Telemadrid for my return, Nine minutes, and the truth is that I left with a flavor that I would rather not have come because Atleti is its people. If there is a team that is suffering from playing to empty doors, it is Atleti. Seeing that image of the empty stadium made no sense, it's like fighting behind closed doors.

-He also recorded with Koke at the Metropolitan for that movie. Is there any advice that you have given to the Atleti players from your experience as a bullfighter for this League final?

-Look, not long ago I was with the team fighting for them, with Miguel Ángel (Gil) in one day. And I tried to convey to them a little that feeling of being a bullfighter. In this profession the artist leaves a hotel and does not know if he is going to return to it because his life is at stake. I told them: “Would you be able to go play a game and leave the hotel without knowing if you are going to return to it? Well, that is the commitment that the bullfighter has ”. A bullfighter never has a show of pain, never complains or wallows. It is a feeling of pride, loyalty and self-love that is what has always defined Atlético. I think that in recent years it has cost us a bit of work because a lot of new people have come in and, being the same coach, the same idea, philosophy, there are players who have not been able to understand what it is to play at Atlético. Here it is not enough to be very good or to cost many millions, here the one who succeeds is the one who has dedication.

-That goes for the game on Saturday, at the Camp Nou …

-The day of the Camp Nou you have to go out to die on the pitch, there is no other option. If the team is capable of going out and surrendering and playing with that commitment, they can be better, put by position in many positions, but Atleti can beat them in commitment and dedication. A dedicated Atleti who goes out to die on the field is almost impossible to beat. We have lived it here, at the Calderón, which only won the matches, those quarter-finals with Barcelona that the stands were shaking, or with Bayern Munich, or here with Liverpool that Cholo said that match, it began to win at the roundabout with the flares. If the team is able to leave that day with that level of dedication, no one can beat it.

And on May 29, in his reappearance, to ask again for that cape for a walk that he already showed to the world in 2014. “Well, we could think about it. It would be a nice way to honor him. I would like to do it in a favorable situation, not just in defeat“, he says right after one of the employees who work on the stadium lawn asks him when he is coming back, where, after that goring that took his life and at the same time made him stronger, 5.2 kilometers from the grass of the Metropolitan.