There is a footballer in the Espanyol youth team who this Saturday is looking for his fifth Copa del Rey against Real Madrid (12:00) who has an unusual history in the world of sport. He left New York behind when he was just 11 years old to be a footballer in Barcelona. It was not an act of survival, but a dream to fulfill. And he is on his way to achieving it. Her adolescence has been in a different direction. “He’s a great player, he’ll make us enjoy the first team for sure,” explain two coaches who know him and have seen his progress.
The story of Luca Warriok (2004) begins much earlier. Settled in New York with his parents and his two brothers, the boy, passionate about soccer, signed up for a campus. Albert Viñas, director of the International Technifútbol Academy, arrived there, who met with a coach in those technical days who had been his student. “You have to take it with you, it’s a show. The family wants me to go to Europe,” he told her. Viñas, whose company is in charge of technifying young people from all over the world in Salou, where they offer them (paying) accommodation and level training, met with the family and Luca, barely 11 years old, traveled to Barcelona.
“He was the youngest. It seemed to us that we should control him more, so one day a week he came to my house for dinner, like another son. We saw that everything was fine. He is introverted, serious, but his dream was to be a footballer “Vines commented. After three years without being able to compete according to the federal rules (“he only played the training matches. We already made him play with the greats”) and with Viñas as legal guardian in Spain, Luca began to compete in the cadet category at Reus, a club from the Tarragona area with a good relationship with the Academy to which it belongs.
Shortly after playing, the first contact with Espanyol took place. He was a Reus-Gimnàstic Manresa B Cadet Preferente. “It fascinated me,” sums up Robert Cuesta, former chief of parakeet recruitment, who speaks with Viñas to find out the player’s situation. The Blue and Whites took him to play in the Oviedo Cup and signed him. “He was a differential player. Vertical, aggressive, a high pace of play, a scorer, good one on one…” explains Cuesta. Luca became a player for Espanyol but due to bureaucratic problems he still couldn’t play in the Blue and Whites’ youth categories: being a professional club, he wasn’t allowed to compete until he was 16 years old.
Until the 2020-21 academic year, the player spent a year between Barcelona and Reus. He slept and studied in La Túrbula, he trained from Monday to Thursday with his teammates from Cadete A del Espanyol, but he traveled to Albert Viñas’ house on Friday to continue with his teammates from Reus playing on weekends. A stage that ended last year, already with the papers. He played in Juvenil B, now in A and he is one of the most promising of a generation that is chasing the fifth Cup. And Luca a dream that is close to him.