First weeks in Granada. How is the experience being?
The city of Granada has not given me time to get to know it almost, only the Sports City and the route. Regarding the club and the team, I am very happy. I have found myself a serious and growing club. Everything he told me before signing is being fulfilled and an excellent squad. On the personal issue first, because we are all people above the profession, but also in football. In the desire to learn, in wanting to change things that should be done differently, in the interest to improve, be attentive to the proposal of the coaching staff… remarkable; I do not say excellent because I do not like to say that, there are always things to improve.
We have already seen the first matches with a clear idea of having the ball, moving it well, taking it out from behind, opening the wings … What are the team's hallmarks going to be?
For me the important thing is to create opportunities and not to generate them. From then on, each one has their own style and I understand that the style to do that, to generate and not to be generated, is what you are seeing these days. For me, having possession is not an end in itself, I don't want to have it for having it, I want to have it with a meaning, which is to hurt the rival. Sometimes to do it you have to go slower or you have to go fast and not so slow. That is what we are trying to convey to the players and it is not easy because on the pitch everything happens very quickly. We have been there for three weeks and things are beginning to be seen. Now we are working on what happened with Alcorcón, who scored quickly, locked themselves up and tried to defend themselves all the time and that's when it is more difficult to attack because there are few spaces, but the team created chances, on the wing, on the inside, we were very good defensively and in the pressure after loss that I like to work with, he was very involved. In everything we tell them, the hallmarks are being seen and this has to lead us to win games, which is what gives you credibility, not playing well or playing poorly. Each one chooses how they want to win or lose and my way of winning or losing is that, it is the one I feel, it is the one I have known for more years and it is the one I like the most and I think the players do too.
The important thing in the end is to generate occasions and not to generate them, then each one does it in their own style
Only three new faces have arrived. Are more reinforcements expected?
Above whether more reinforcements are planned, we must respect the players in the team. The club must be prepared to improve the team at any time and in any position. You have a base squad where there are certain players who are going to be there, but it may be that those players come out or find one that improves what you have. What we talked to Patricia (Rodríguez, counselor) and what Pep (Boada, sports director) transmitted is that we have to be prepared for an open market for any position until the last moment. It is our obligation, to be attentive to the market until the last moment. We analyze and have the information of what I see these days beyond what I have seen in images, because I have seen all the games last year and I have analyzed them. When you really know the players it is in the day to day, in training. There are a series of circumstances in which you analyze, that you see the player, not as an individual, but as part of a group. A good player can be good for one thing and with some teammates, but for what you want from your team, it still doesn't fit. There are no good or bad players, but more suitable or not for a way of playing. That is why there are players who can be very important for a team after they are not. Or the same, someone who was important in the last two years now with my way of playing that is different is not so important or is not essential. Therefore, we remain attentive to the market and we will be until the last day.
What role will the quarry have in your team and, above all, the players who have been in Marbella?
I'm not going to personalize because I don't want the boys to make mistakes, but those I'm lining up you are already seeing and someone else who has not been able to come due to a numerical issue. For me, the quarry is going to be fundamental. The time that I am here, I hope it will be a few years and the project will give us joy, it has to be fundamental for a club that wants to consolidate in the First Division. You cannot be buying players permanently, you have to train players for your team to be able to sell them and generate income. It will be important, they will train at the same time as us, I will have a reduced squad of 20 players and two or three goalkeepers precisely for that, so that those who are close and training with us can take the step. I'm not going to put them in the first team, they are going to put them alone with their performance. To get to the first team you have to do very well in the second. It is not good for me to be talented, to have had a good performance, to be in the quarry and to be from Granada. When he has excelled in the second team, he is only going to get. It is not difficult for me to put young kids, I already showed it in the other places where I have been, I have trained in almost all categories of football and it is a blessing to have young boys with enthusiasm, eyes open and eager to succeed.
A long-term project, as he says, since the club signed him for two years. What is the real goal at this time?
The club has said it, the important thing is the consolidation in the First Division, that seeing Granada in the First is normal, that there is no doubt that it will be the following year. After the circumstances of each season, the market or what the other teams do, they will lead you to be able to fight for some objectives or others. They were all excited to see Granada in Europe last year, if not this year or the next, but I want to play in Europe. I say this openly, although later it can be a drag if you don't get it. I don't know anyone who says they want to lose or go down. We all want to be as high as possible and we have to be ambitious. We have very important players in the squad and the club is making a great effort in a horrible economic context for all teams to keep the squad. Then the parties will put us on our site. Anyone who is not in the top five, you have to make 42 points to save yourself and look up. I take it a little further from 'game to game' to 'training to training', improving, growing and being demanding at all times to perform at their best and give joy to the fans who deserve it.
I want to play in Europe. I say it openly, although later it can be a drag if you don't get it …
Of course they have set the bar very high …
But for me that is a nice challenge. I set myself the challenge of improving them, because if I say how successful it has been, I am going to do a little less … I don't wake up thinking that I am not going to achieve the maximum. If I don't believe it, who is the visible head and is in charge, we are annoyed. What has happened in recent years has been very beautiful for Granada, it has laid the foundations of what the long-term project has to be and from there to ensure that the project is permanently winning, robust and that there will be years later. or down, but always be there. That for the fans, after being with the clubs the other day, they will appreciate it. He told me that we are used to losing, the only thing we demand of the team is that they leave their skin on the pitch and well, now let's see if you also get used to winning and being in the First Division because it is the most beautiful thing for a project and club that is laying a solid foundation to achieve them.
Many call him inexperience but the truth is that he has been a coach since he was 14 years old.
In the end, the experience is relative. In the book I wrote there was a chapter on the limiting experience. It is almost always seen as a positive, but it has a negative aspect, because you can have a lot of experience doing it wrong. That does not guarantee that you will train in First and you will do better. These last ten years I have only been in Monaco and the National Team, but I have been there. Since I was 14 years old, I think like a coach and I have the concerns of a coach. Any coach who makes it to the First Division would like to have the preparation that I have had to reach this moment. Being in one of the best changing rooms in the world, Barcelona with the second treble, Roma, Celta … at the highest level and at a normal and average level of the category. That a coach who is going to debut and has not had it would sin. Experience for me are simplistic conclusions that have to be used. Robert Moreno is inexperienced because he has not trained in First … if training in First guaranteed something, the same 20 coaches would be there for 30 years, but that is not the case. This is a wheel that is changing and you have to face it. I accept that they tell me that, I listen to it and there it stays.
How does a 14-year-old kid decide he wants to be a coach?
He was not very good as a footballer. From the minute you knew you didn't have the conditions. He did it in parallel, played and trained. My father was also a coach. I played until I was 25 in the lower categories and I did it in parallel with being a coach. I was amused, I was passionate about it. Having your father at home who is a coach, who earned his title, who trained me when I was little at school because he liked all this sport … that aroused that concern. I started asking myself questions, if I had had a better coach, would I have been a better footballer? As a coach, what happened to me should not happen to other children. Football has changed a lot and fortunately the coaches are getting better and better prepared, but when I was little, any parent was the coach and they did atrocious things. I have been in training running for two hours circling Cornellà and a coach was stepping on our stomach, a hard belly! Living that generates that concern.
How important is data analysis and big data to you?
It is an ideal complement that helps you see information that you cannot see with your own eyes. I became involved in football through being a video analyst. There is a scouting that sees players for the technical secretariat and another that analyzes rivals through video. At the time, when I made my long-term strategy to reach the professional world, I said: “I am not going to be a professional player.” I realized it soon. If you analyze the market you realize that not being a player is a great disadvantage to become a professional because of a matter of knowledge of people who can give you the opportunity and dressing room experiences when watching a game live and you miss so much information that I said: “I'm going to use the video to record and calmly analyze all the situations from the standstill.” That is the first thing we use. Then came the data analysis part. When we get tactical cameras, which we achieved with Mediacoach when I was at Barça with Primera analysts, you realize that with the human eye it is impossible for you to perceive so many stimuli even when recording the video. The machines collect that information that is important but not decisive because in the end it is your assessment of something as complex as football that is going to give you the data. They are a means, not an end in itself. I'm not going to make a decision just for the data, because the context can be very different. The human component will always be there to anticipate if that player is going to fit. They are important but not decisive.
I'm not going to make a decision just for the data, because the context can be very different.
And in the analysis of the rival?
In my case, what I like is to accumulate a lot of vision of matches and the tactical camera that allows us to see all the players, I manage to make a mental map of how they move and perceive where there are free spaces to know how to defend and attack. Then with the macro viewing you do not see specific players and you go to the micro: who is more winner of duels, beats more one against one, more kicks … that does help you make decisions in the information that you transmit to your player that nor can it be infinite. You have to make a funnel to collect all that amount of data and know which is the one that works for the player, to help them develop their task. It does not help me to have millions of data if the one who has to execute it, which is the player, only keeps one or two, you have to know what is important for each player in each position. It's more complicated. You have to take it, chew it, train it and the player is able to do it. The coach's task is to act as a filter and give the correct information he needs to carry out his task in the field.
What good are all those big locker room experiences?
From minute one I became a professional I took it as an apprenticeship. Since I started at Barça B I said: “now I'm an analyst, but I'm going to act as if I were a coach.” I looked at what happened, I kept the information and I thought what I would have done: I like this, I would do it the same and I don't like it, I would have done it this other way. What I have always tried to do is analyze what is around a coach on a day-to-day basis in order to generate my own way of carrying it out. I have learned a lot, I think I am quite a sponge. I have been wrong in things, others I have been right, I always try to improve. Robert Moreno would not be what he is without that experience from those years as an assistant.
The opportunity of the National Team came to him and it was what has changed his career.
In the end the goal is to be the first coach. They were rare circumstances, but it is what puts you in front of nothing less than the Spanish National Team, which is one of the maximum things a coach can aspire to. Carrying it forward, also successfully, I think, showed me that I was prepared to be in charge of a bench and it came at a time that I needed new stimuli. Always being a helper shouldn't have taken forever. It was being able to show me that he was prepared to coach any team. I dare with any team, then I will succeed or fail, but I realized that I was ready, from the age of 14, training to get to that moment, although I had already done it in lower categories.
They were rare circumstances, but it is what puts you in front of nothing less than the Spanish National Team, which is one of the maximum things a coach can aspire to.
Do you think Granada is your time to show?
I care about what I show myself because it is a personal challenge, that I am trained and prepared to do what I like. Above that there is an external component that is not to be demonstrated, but to make people happy. One of the nice things about this profession is the ability to make people happy with something that is the least of the important things. There are people who go to work happy on Monday because on Sunday their team has won and the week faces it in a different way. That is a non-tangible payment that encourages me to continue working in this position and impose myself on being demanding.