Joaquin Sanchez has given an extensive interview to Daily Mail in which he reviews his entire career and where he talks, among many other matters, about his complicated relationship with Ronald Koeman when they met at Valencia in the 2007/2008 season.
“Pfff! I'm not even going to name it [a Koeman] ”, He says when asked by the Dutch coach of the Barcelona. “Honestly, he did nothing for me. You know very well how all that ended. But these are things you have to go through. I learned from that, but it was not good “, recalled the portuense-
Koeman faced most of the players of the Valencia in his six months at the club and left Joaquín on the bench as a substitute in the final victory of the Copa del Rey that occurred just before he was fired. “I had a difficult time during that period. I was in that dressing room where there were players who had been excluded from the rest of the squad. Every morning there was a really tense situation. When you get up and you don't feel like going into the locker room, that says it all, it was really screwed up, ”he recalls.
He rejected Mourinho
The portuense remembers how in 2005, after winning the Copa del Rey and shortly before marrying, he planted Jose Mourinho, who expressly traveled to Seville to try to convince him to sign for him Chelsea, to which the Portuguese directed from the previous campaign. “They were all at the Alfonso XIII hotel and I was returning from an advertising engagement in Madrid and did not want to go to the meeting. He knew if he went, he would end up going to England. So I didn't go. Talk to Mourinho later and I apologized. And then he thanked me. He told me: “I appreciate that you are sincere because, well, you are the first footballer who has said no to me.”
“Lopera He told me that I had to go, because they had reached an agreement, ”says Joaquín, recalling the negotiations of the then president of Betis, Manuel Ruiz de Lopera, with Roman abramovich for a sale of about 37 million euros at that time]. “Everything had happened very fast for me. I was 20 years old when I played in the 2002 World Cup. I remember having a lot of stress because it was not easy to assume everything. When the moment of truth came, I didn't want to take that step of going to another team. I just didn't see myself leaving the house. Lopera said “here comes the Russian again with an offer behind his back. But I was happy where I was.
Joaquin He does not regret the decision he made in his day: “Well, the answer is no, I don't. I know I missed an important opportunity to play for a great team and win a lot of money, but it just wasn't what I was thinking about at the time. In the end, this is such a big deal that the word of the player doesn't always count for much. And sometimes he accepts even though he knows that he is not going to be an important player [in the new club]. It is true that when you receive an offer from a powerful club it is difficult to reject it, but sometimes we forget the most important thing, which is to play ”, explains the portuense.
His time at Valencia
In the summer of 2006 Joaquín went to Valencia, even though the Real Madrid I wanted it too, but the president Lopera he asked for too much and in the end it was the team that bought him for 25 million euros. There he played under orders Quique Sánchez Flores, Ronald Koeman Y Unai emery. “The first period was not easy at first. Quique was a coach who demanded a lot physically. I ended up playing and it was very good. Quique was a very important coach for me ”, he assures.
He laughs as he remembers once saying that Emery's video sessions were so long that he would “run out of popcorn.” “It was a good time,” he says. “He came with great enthusiasm and brought important changes. Tactically, he was one of the best prepared coaches. But it was so intense that it made your head explode sometimes. And the videos, it's true. I think it has improved: I think the clips have a more normal length now ”.
The EuroMálaga
When he left Valencia in 2011 he went to Malaga of Manuel Pellegrini, with which he finished fourth in his first season and eliminated in the Champions League for him Borussia Dortmund of Jurgen Klopp in the quarter-finals the following year, with two goals offside in added time from the German team: “If VAR had existed, we would have been in the semi-finals,” he says. “I came out in the 86th minute and was in the semifinal. I sat down and what happened, happened. We went back to the hotel and it was very sad, but when we got to Malaga it was as if we had won the Champions. It still makes my hair stand on end when I remember it because the whole city was at the airport ”.
51 times international
The last of his 51 games with the Spanish team took place in November 2007, after finishing the qualifying phase for the Eurocup 2008, where the most successful stage in the history of the national team began – two Euro Cups and a World Cup – without his contest.
An interview in which he described the Spanish team as a ‘mess and chaos’ in 2006 was too sincere and ended up taking its toll. “My way of being has done me no favors, but it shouldn't be that way. You have to judge me as a footballer. Years ago I stopped thinking about that and it is also true that there has been a great team and great players and it is normal that they did not have me as their main option, ”explains Joaquín, who always had a thorn stuck with Luis Aragones. “At that time, I think Luis Aragones it was very, very, very, very unfair to me. I've thought about it, dreamed it, many times, and he knows it. I don't know where he is now, but wherever he is, he knows.
Joaquin explains the reasons for his longevity in football and fitness: “My mother breastfed me until I was six or seven years old. The doctor says that is why I am so strong ”, explains Joaquín, who has already turned 20 years since his debut and remembers it“ as if it were yesterday ”. “When you get to 30-something, every year you think: let's see this year, but physically I'm in good shape. If I can do another year after this, if my body can take it and they want me to do it, I will continue, I will not crawl. In the end I think that my career has been based on always trying to be a boy who does not lose that illusion, who comes to train with great hunger and desire to be professional, and of course that is the case now more than ever. over the years”.