THE REPORT Quique Sánchez Flores: “Madrid is exclusivity, Atlético is passion”

White and red and white in the same skin with the uniqueness that it falls well on both shores, it is cordially treated and recognized for its work and professionalism. Two seasons as a Real Madrid player (1993-95) with a League as the standard and almost two courses as Atlético's coach (2009-11) with a Europa League and a European Super Cup as the flag. Tonight he will be an impartial observer, but it is clear from his words that, as a team and a style of play, he believes more in rojiblanco than in white.

What does it mean to you to talk about Real Madrid?

Exclusiveness. It is a very exclusive club for many reasons. And it seems to me that as he is right now, with those silent pauses that he has, he is preparing something. Beyond the fact that it is building, possibly, the best stadium in the world, it gives me the feeling that after and behind everything, its president is preparing a great Real Madrid and there will be a great Real Madrid. From a very young age they taught me that it was a different club, the best in the world. My father, Isidro, explained what it meant. He lived one of his best times alongside Di Stéfano, Puskas, Gento … He won four Leagues. Then, as a player, I experienced it live. I experienced something extraordinary. It makes you improve in all aspects.

And talk about Atlético?

It is a patriotic, rational, passionate club … it is the best definition. He puts passion in everything he does on the field and in his fans. You are going through an extraordinary moment dominated by continuity at work. He is already one of the greats and not only in Spain, where he has approached Real Madrid and Barcelona in many ways.

From a Madrid player father a child was born who was white as a child for obvious reasons.

No. I was born in 65, my father's last year at Real Madrid and I am going to Barcelona to live when he signs for Sabadell. What I remember from those early years is that we were going to watch the Creu Alta games, I gave my first kicks to the plastic cups and that I took a photo with my great idol, who was José Ángel Iribar. But it wasn't from Madrid, it wasn't from anyone until then I went to Valencia because of the admiration I had for my godfather, Di Stéfano, who was no longer at Madrid at the time, but trained there. Everything that came to me as a child was from Valencia and I became from Valencia.

And what weighs more on your mind and heart, the 78 games you played for Real Madrid or the 102 you spent as Atlético's coach?

They both weigh the same. It's two years and two years. I am eternally grateful to both situations. They improved me in everything, they made me very competitive and they demanded the maximum of me, both first as a player and later as a coach. On both sidewalks they have treated me with enormous respect. It may be very weird, I know. But I assure you that I meet Madridistas on the street who tell me about the League we won, from 5-0 to Barcelona. And if I meet Atléticos, they show me that they are grateful to that stage that was a prelude to everything that has followed. I can not choose. It's like mom and dad. I love them the same, I can't choose.

Do you see tonight's game as a coach or as a fan of both teams?

In this case I put the coach's magnifying glass. Yes. I'm looking forward to it. We had the Champions League ahead of us with everything at stake and I already thought that the best game was at the weekend. I want to see many things. That game and football in general are still just another religion. He has a lot of fear, passion, many followers behind.

And as a coach, what do you want to see from Madrid?

How he reacts because he is in reaction times, if he is still there. We are with the advanced League but it is trying to recover. You can see that he now wants to recover the roadmap from the previous season. He also lost a few games at the beginning, the pandemic came and then he said that a good defense was the best virtue the team could have, but since it has offensive players what it had and has to do now is find the balance between attack and defense. . Knowing how to defend from behind the ball when you have to defend, but also keep attacking. All of this is very difficult to find in the middle of the battle and with Atlético facing much more difficult. It is a mark exam.

And what do you want to see from Atlético?

It will be very important to know if in this match, which can be very important because it can mark a definite difference in points between them, he will continue to maintain his rigor, his accuracy, his balance, his attack, which is now more brilliant. But all of this makes me less doubtful. I'm going to see Atleti with the certainty that nothing is going to change and that he is going to be himself.

It is a good day to know if Simeone maintains his tactical evolution of the three centrals against a team that can attack him with three forwards.

It's the perfect example of how systems fit together. What does Cholo do with Hermoso? In defense he can keep the 1-4-4-2, but in attack and part of three, Hermoso stays and occupies the band with Lodi or Carrasco as long wingers. If you maintain that adjustment, the figure of Real Madrid of a single striker stuck between three centrals is very lonely. Either you do things very well on the outside and load the area with enough players or it will make him uncomfortable. In any case, before this approach, Madrid will have to think. It is a team that to this day cannot live on the lateral centers. A few years ago with Bale, Ronaldo, Benzema … it was a solution because those three were always in the centers of Marcelo or Carvajal, but now only Benzema remains, who has the least header. Madrid will depend on resources such as combinations on the outside, the skills of Rodrygo or Vinicius in one-on-one. A type of resources that you either have very well managed and worked on or they will be scarce.

As a coach and former player, can you reasonably explain the metamorphosis of Real Madrid from one game to another?

What you cannot buy with money in the end only depends on the job. When it comes to illusion, happiness, intensity, ambition … This can only be achieved with attitude. And when you do not enter the games from minute one, but you enter when 20 or more have already passed, or when the opponent has won your pulse, then intangibles need work. As Luis said, morality had to be bought at the English Court. That's where Real Madrid is late in matches. And then it is very expensive because the competition has increased so much in all the tournaments that going behind in that is an impossible challenge. Now any team thinks they can beat it. It lacks competitive tension. If you don't have tension, your transitions open up, are weak and you run back and forth, and running like that has always been quite difficult.

As Atlético coach he never beat Madrid, he lost all four games. And as a white player, he beat the rojiblancos in the two games he faced them …

Those were those times when we couldn't turn it around and as a player more or less the same. My athletic part is true that he does not know what it is to win against Madrid. I owe him, I am in debt.

This football conversation cannot end without talking about Messi and Barça, even if he does not play the derby.

I think they do not understand each other equally. Barça has thought all this time that Messi can handle everything, that he can put up with everything, age, managerial changes, Neymar's departure, the club's problems … and Messi continues to think that the best player is all together, as he said Di Stéfano, and that he needs players like the ones he had before at his side. I don't know if they bored him or if he was bored by himself, but his unhappiness shows in the field. Before he was wrapped up and the club has not known how to adapt the absence of those players and Leo cannot handle everything by himself.

Would you like to talk about football for a bit? To Quique Sánchez Flores, (Madrid, 55 years old) former international player and currently a coach without work more for personal reasons than for lack of offers, The invitation seems more than tempting to him and he invites his interlocutor to take the kickoff with his eyes. Between a soccer player and a coach, there are around a thousand games between grass and bench and now he defines himself as an observer of the matter.

How is the job of a coach without a team?

Much observation. In anonymity you do not live badly. Your happiness does not depend on the result. In terms of state of mind, I feel balanced. Sometimes, on what I see, I put the coach's magnifying glass and other times I see it in a more casual way, as a spectator who wants to enjoy the show. I observe the evolution of football from another state that is not that of a coach, but football is the same. It does not change. What changes is the way of interpreting it. I intend to observe so as not to be left behind and continue being part of what happens.

And do you work every day, or whatever you feel like?

I do not want to give an image that is not. You have your times and I have set some to recover energy and a different vision but not exactly work daily. I have set my deadlines and the times will come when I want to add experiences to my life and I will be prepared. There is soccer almost every day and I am like any fan. A day with football is a better day. I watch them depending on the game. I choose the ones that I want to analyze as a technician. Others I see with my children who are footballers. Quique has just turned 20 and plays for Adarve in Third and Pablo is 17 and plays for Getafe.

The million dollar question Where is football heading from a tactical, technical, physical point of view …?

The essence does not change. Two areas, a ball, the importance of the players and scoring one goal more than the other, but it is true that it is a more contextualized football, with a much more specific language and a very important addition of technology where big data grows , although I maintain that statistics do not exist without context. It seems that all that makes us safer. I notice a lot more diversity in the systems. Before 1-4-4-2 it went to 1-4-2-3-1 and not much else. And you spent the whole season playing like that. As it works today with the settings almost all systems are compatible. With a simple movement of the player you change. We are unfolding systems rather than imposing a system. All this does not hinder football, on the contrary it enriches it.

We are already in a more physical football, more speed, power …

Now athletes are physically stronger. They have changed their nutrition habits, they have more knowledge, much more information. In my time we had a love for sports, now in addition to that love they are aware of their challenge, that time has given them another body. They have taken football to another level.

Let's go to the National Team that wins the three major competitions with a series of eminently technical players, who take care of the ball, without great physique …

What happened then was not generated in a school, it was something innate in those footballers. The tiqui-taca was born as a product of adding many precise and very good players with the ball and that trend was created. A generation with 15 footballers who do not lose the ball comes together and creates a school. It attracted attention because it came naturally and turned the gaze of football towards them. Those are puffs that football gives us, as before the Milan of Sacchi or the Barça of Cruyff and Guardiola. Now football has returned to its normal evolution. The physical increases, the knowledge increases, a lot of strategy….

Seeing Bayern, Liverpool, I would go so far as to say that the tiqui-taca has passed away.

Not dead. Good football is exclusive to accurate players. The more accurate players you have, the more chances you have to play well. It is not exactly what is happening now. The teams that have the best players and set trends are not in the line of the tiqui-taca. The teams that played like this, Madrid, Barcelona, ​​have weakened. Bayern and Liverpool play something else. The City continues to play that but is changing to other types of players. The trends are still set by the players, what happens is that those of now are stronger, faster. The football of the best teams is now different.

Bayern and Liverpool are now the reference.

They are, and not only because they are the European champions of the last two years, but also because they do the same old football adapted to the present. A fast, offensive football, of ambition to end the rival, annihilate him, make blood. The important thing is that it continues to be attacking football because they are the best teams in the world and they have the best offensive players. All kinds of forms seem valid to me from the moment you compete. As long as you don't have the ambition to win, any style is acceptable. That is what makes. The differences are marked by the players and the intention.

Will there come a day in football that styles become universal, that everyone wants to play the same …?

Hopefully not. Hopefully diversity will continue to exist because the sum of ideas is born from diversity. Hopefully we all don't have the same ideas and keep this game as a strategy game. What makes the game interesting is that we try to put one style before the other and know in the end who is more skilled and has been able to impose their way of playing. That gives us wealth. We talk a lot about ways to play and we forget the luck factor that in this game is lethal.

You have lived the Premier from the inside, is it as much as it seems from the outside?

The tradition of the English and their way of understanding the game is difficult to change. As soon as you get there they tell you that they don't like the horizontal game because football comes from rugby and in rugby what you want is to carry the ball behind the line when before. And they want to get the ball to the area as soon as possible. They have adapted to the diversification of foreign coaches and players who have led another type of football that was not direct, fast … They love Guardiola, they loved Wenger, but they want to touch forward. From the inside I did not see so many differences with La Liga. They are the two best world leagues. It is a compact Championship that applauds for example the Leicester phenomenon.

Is football for the players or the coaches?

About the leadership of the coaches I have serious doubts. What can never be lost are the decisions of the players. Coaches have to have the initiative of the footballer and, sometimes, trying to lead you take it away. If you want to maintain a group unity, a balance, it is useless to carry them under a super rigid baton. The coach's roadmap must be in the management of the dressing room, in communication and knowledge. You cannot get out of those three situations and then the players, who are the ones who decide, have their own initiative. We must work so that the players give us answers. One is very limited on match day. Everything interesting that happens that day is inside, not outside. Therefore, in the end I think that football is more about the players.

Do you believe in author teams, understanding the coach as such?

They have a lot of merit because a leadership job is also recognized. He is attributed authorship because the coach has known how to bring his team together so much that he looks like himself. Whenever they talk about author teams they refer to teams full of good players. It has a lot of merit to bring high-level players to the same destination repeatedly and for a long time. In any case, I would like that concept to be extended to coaches like Mendilibar, who also manufactures teams that play the way he likes and achieve goals that are lower but still have success. I would like to dignify those of lower-ranking author teams, which there are.

For Quique Sánchez Flores to say ‘that team plays well’, what does it have to have?

I distinguish the teams between those that develop their proposal or those that do not develop their proposal. Those who are able to carry out a series of concepts and repeat, and repeat are those that catch my attention. All styles in soccer are valid while competing. Styles or systems in which there is no ambition to win or compete are not acceptable.

The latest fashion, go out with the ball played from your penalty spot. Isn't that already a bit obsessive?

It seems that if you do not do it you are not in football and it seems that if you do it when it goes wrong you will be criticized. Each one must be very aware of what they want to apply that is the most practical for your team and that depends mainly on the foot that your players have. That is why players with good footing are so important more and more, if we go to that football of starting playing from behind because the new rule has given us 20 more meters of field and it is played from further back, or you have a good foot to combine or You do what big teams like Liverpool or Real Madrid do that at some point in the game decide that this is not convenient and then they play directly to choose a second play. Anything goes, but it is a delicate matter. It depends on the type of player you have.