Pepe Mel (Madrid, just turned 59) was a professional footballer for 16 seasons (1982-1998) and since 2000 he has been a coach uninterrupted. An enlightened football bracero who, overnight, still in the midst of frustration at his dismissal as Las Palmas coach on January 24, has become one of the most requested men of Spanish football. Reason: he and no one else was the coach who, at the age of 16, made Pedri debut in the Second Division Division.
After the umpteenth exhibition of the Canarian player and the icing on his pipe to Balenziaga (a la Xavi), Pepe Mel has had to explain by active and passive all the tools of his pupil. This journey through the time tunnel is about Pedri and his long professional career, that of Mel.
—After the long dozen interviews you have given with Pedri as the sole protagonist, do you have anything left to tell about it?
—This 16-year-old boy already had an unusual maturity. He went from youth to Second, a competition with a lot of skill and very tough. He didn’t notice it at all. The best thing about him is that he understands the game wonderfully. The closer he is to the exit of the ball and the associative game, the better. He always does what he has to do. When he has to cross, he crosses and when he has to dribble, he dribbles. He has the gift of never being wrong in that regard. He is not spectacular in many ways, but he does everything right.
—From what you say it is a pure interior, lane of 8 or lane of 10, but you also used it stuck to the left and there you also played in the lower teams.
—He sees football wonderfully between the lines. He gives those passes that leave you in front of the goalkeeper. Everything that is being close to the forwards favors him. He put him there because the Pedri I took was a puny kid, who wasn’t muscular and physically wasn’t the one he is now. He has gained four or five kilos of muscle mass. He was very good at aerobics, but not at strength. From the left he appeared inward and surprised. Like Del Bosque did at Real Madrid with Zidane and Roberto Carlos, bridging the gap, of course. If he starts from the outside they don’t detect him and he creates numerical superiority. Luis de la Fuente must have seen it and that is why he did the same in the National Team. In addition, he is a boy who does not erase himself in defensive tasks. That’s the funny thing. A player with that talent is capable of running 50 meters to recover. Defensively we were not one less with him.
—Iniesta, with whom he is compared, did not much like to start from the outside, he preferred to start from the central zone… However, Del Bosque thought that he did more damage when he came from the band.
—They are players who, if they play in a fixed position, for example, you put them on hook, a defensive pivot can overwhelm them and not let them play. While, if they come from the band, by surprise they cause more problems.
—So your improvement is on the physical plane.
Yes, and it can improve more. Last season, with Koeman, in the game against PSG, the black footballers, with his physique, ran over him. In the clash, in the divided ball he always lost and now he doesn’t. He now he no longer goes to the ground on contact.
“Pedri has the gift of not making mistakes. When he has to cross, he crosses; when he has to dribble, he dribbles”
Let’s talk about your career. It strikes me that after spending three years at Castilla scoring goals, he didn’t have a single chance to play for the first team, not even a game…
I played a friendly. Del Bosque’s last game was a friendly in Puertollano. I came in to replace him. They were his last minutes at Madrid and my only minutes in the first team. Then I went to Osasuna. I did not have more opportunities because I coincided with a generation of exceptional footballers. It all depends on the time you live in. My Madrid won five Leagues in a row. They were Juanito, Santillana, Hugo Sánchez, Valdano… There was the Quinta del Buitre. Precisely my partner in Castilla, Emilio, went up and stayed. We couldn’t fit any more. Pardeza himself made it to the first team, but then he had to find his way elsewhere. In other times, maybe with less, you get more. The good thing about Real Madrid is that the players who left played with some ease in the rest of the Spanish clubs: Osasuna, Espanyol, Malaga…
—This confirms the theory that Madrid’s quarry creates universal players and Barça’s, for example, creates more players for Barça itself.
-So is. I have experienced it in my flesh. The Madrid player adapts to any style. In Madrid they don’t teach you a style. You go through different coaches and each one plays as he wants. What matters is the spirit, how you behave, the sacrifice and competing because in Madrid the only thing worth winning is. If you come second, you fail. While at Barça they teach you a way to act tactically on the field, how you have to move, profile yourself. You play a mandatory 1-4-3-3 and if you go out and go to a team that plays 1-4-4-2 or with a line of five, you no longer adapt. That’s how it is.
—It could be summed up that in Madrid they teach you to win and in Barça, to play.
I don’t know if it’s that blunt, but yes. In Madrid they teach you how you have to do things and, of course, how to win. I always remember that being a youth in a Cup duel Barça eliminated us and with our heads ‘lowered’ we went inside and the delegate forced us to go out on the field again to congratulate the winners who were celebrating with the president, the very José Luis Núñez, may he rest in peace. That education forged me as an athlete and as a person.
—As a coach he has already played more games than as a player…
—Honestly, I think I’m a better coach than I was as a footballer. My last years as a player I already saw football as a coach. I was preparing to step out of line. I see myself more in this role of leading a group, which for me is the main function of a coach.
—And also with how hard the Second Division is, he has trained more in this category than in the First Division…
—In the First Division I have played 160 games and in the Second Division 420. It is normal. Making a hole for yourself in the First Division is complicated and I was lucky enough to spend six years at Betis. Being in professional football is already an achievement. The work is the same in First as in Second. In clubs like, for example, Real Madrid, the main thing is knowing how to lead the group, but you are more of a coach in other less big teams because of the shortcomings you have.
“I was very extreme, but today’s football has killed them. Football schools are dangerous”
—And it doesn’t make you angry that they never call you from a club with aspirations beyond fighting for promotion or not relegation? Even at Betis, which is a great, he was in stages of relegation and promotion.
“Of course it makes me angry!” It burns a lot, but I suppose there will be many other technicians who think like me. At Betis we were promoted twice, we qualified for the Europa League, they fired me twice… It’s not easy to bet on the Spanish coach many times and, however, we are in great demand abroad. I have never been called by a club of those that you say. And I suppose they will also have their pressure. I have always been a firefighter. Even Deportivo called me when I was suffocated in the First Division. I never had a team to fight to be on top. I do not lower the arms in this sense. My idol is Ranieri, who won the Premier with Leicester at the age of 65. You have to keep working. Positions must be earned. The important thing is to be there and I have the name that I have in Spanish football because I have been non-stop for 20 years. In all the seasons I have trained.
—Has the coach Mel changed a lot from his beginnings, Murcia, Tenerife… to the current one?
—Yes, football and the game change. We have gone from everyone imitating the National Team and Barça, to that the winning football is Simeone’s; Now everyone wants to play with five defenders because that’s how Chelsea won the Champions League… Styles and methodologies vary. Football advances and you have to recycle. It is not true that in football everything is invented. In my head I continue to conceive my pressing and dominating team. This is what has paid off for me. There are different ways to achieve it and what you have to have are arguments to convince the footballer. The coach has to convince no matter what tactic he uses. All tactics are good.
“He used to like extremes, but there aren’t any anymore.”
—As a good center forward that he was. I played with Míchel, Gordillo, Martín Vázquez… Extremes were my life. The lack of wingers is now the fault of the football schools. Not everything in football is associative. Sometimes a child haggles and they tell him off because he has to pass it. Well no. Maybe the play called for a dribble. The same with the ends. The current football has killed them. They do not exist. As a lesser evil they can end up on the sides.
“Ball or spaces?”
Football for me is movement, people who reach positions where they were not and appear. People who play foot… it’s been a long time. Pep’s own Barça won in the end due to the unchecking and one against one by Pedrito, Etoo and Messi. I needed people with overflow.
-We finish. He is about to publish his fifth novel, ‘The Xana killers’. For when a novel about football?
—I have thought about it several times, but I would have to write things that I have experienced and in the end it would be known who I am talking about. I don’t know if I’ll do it when I say I’ve come this far as a coach. Meanwhile, it is better not to write it. I have it in my head. It is very simple. It’s talking about everything I’ve experienced since I joined Real Madrid at the age of 11, in the social tournament, in Camacho’s team, and I left at 23… and married. Is that one year, in the Second B of two groups, with Alcalá, on loan from Real Madrid, I was the top scorer in all of Spain with 30 goals.
“As a coach, I look like a firefighter, it’s maddening that they only call you for extreme situations”
My Premier Stories
—Of the six months (2014) at West Bromwich Albion, pure Premier, what did you bring?
-It was amazing. A teaching of what the other football is. Another way of seeing things, of preparing the teams, of living together day by day. The sounds are different. The Premier is a spectacle. I recommend it to all professionals who can go. It has nothing to do with Spanish football. Why? I do not know. Perhaps because within the same Premier there are two leagues, that of the big six and that of the others. In the first ones you have Latin, German, Nordic players… In the other part, the one I played, almost all of them are British players. In my squad they were all Welsh, Scottish, English, Irish… Not a continental. It is difficult to change their way of thinking. I have stories…
—Don’t hold back.
‘Forster was the goalkeeper for the England team. Doing an exercise to get the ball out with the center backs from behind, he tells me why we were doing that, that we were wasting time. I asked him, how would you do it? And he took the ball from the first touch of the goal and kicked it into the opposite area. And he told me everything serious to get there I save everything you tell me. That is his way of understanding the game. I tell you another. We played relegation against Tottenham. If we won, we were saved, and they had a chance to get into the Champions League. We both had to win. We play in Birmingham, at home. After 20 minutes we were winning 3-0. Imagine a Spanish team at home winning 3-0 and risking their lives, because what you want is to ensure. Well, it was not possible there. Every pass we made backwards, they whistled at us. They wanted the room. We were 3-3 and because Adebayor missed a penalty in the last minute.