Paco Flores was the Espanyol firefighter who changed Sarrià for Montjuïc. It premiered on matchday 29 of the 1996-97 academic year. Connoisseur of grassroots football, he gave Raúl Tamudo the confidence to debut with a goal in Hercules and directed the last parakeet meeting in the old and unforgettable stadium. The club required it on more occasions. One of them to obtain the third title in the club’s history, the Copa del Rey de Valencia, in 2000.
The coach passed by the motorized couch of Rafa Ramos, Espanyol’s press officer for 25 years, who chatted with Flores, already retired since his last experience at Nàstic de Tarragona in 2006. When he was a child, this son of Aragonese who studied at Salle Bonanova was seduced by Espanyol. “My father took me to Sarrià to see Zaragoza. But I became fond of Espanyol and at school he caused me serious problems. He fought me. The only possibility was to be good people, 98% of the children were Catalans. Not to me they could step on me, “commented Flores, a person of character.
The explanation for their parakeet militarism is logical. Flores was impressed with the Espanyol fans. “How is it possible that the fans fill the field if they never win anything?”, he asked himself. That same hobby that filled the surroundings of Mestalla in the Copa del Rey in 2000. It had been 60 years since the Parakeet team had lifted a title (“when the bus turned and we saw people we were blown away. You had to win for them“) and, with that rogue goal by Raúl Tamudo, the perico team beat Atlético de Madrid and lifted the trophy.
Paco Flores.
JORDI ALEMANY
A brave coach who opted for the quarry
But Flores was a brave coach, who opted for the youth players. His subsidiary was on the verge of winning the Intertoto Cup, he lost to Valencia in the final with “a Montjuïc with 30,000 people and some players who showed that they deserved to be in First“One of them was Tamudo, his soccer son, who made his debut in 1997 and later became Flores’s soccer son and the top scorer in LaLiga in Blue and White history.”Paco bet to the death for me. My life changed for him“Synthesized Tamudo, who joked with his former coach.
In a relaxed atmosphere, Flores brought out his most humorous and sarcastic side. “Where it went, the rain would come,” he said as a presentation, to later recall funny moments such as that of his stay in Pals in his first year with the first team, when he had to save the category and all the players, including foreigners, sang I am a Miner by Antonio Molina upon arrival in the city of Girona. “That’s when I saw that we were saved. You always had to be positive.”
He also recalled with Tamudo some battles of his years in the subsidiary, when the striker, barely 17 years old, “hesitated” by answering him in a broken “what’s up nen?” and the technician sent the whole team running. Years later, Tamudo asked the Werder Bremen footballer Pasanen for the shirt and gave it to Flores. A detail between two historical Espanyol who, luckily parrot, coincided as coach and player at the same time.