“The best were the meals.
Michael Robinson would take us out to lunch at two and there were times when it was almost seven and we were still there chatting.
In an hour we were supposed to be on set. "
This is how Lobo Carrasco (Alcoy, 1959) recalls, who was co-host of
The Day After
between 1994 and 1997, the hours prior to the broadcast every Monday of the most celebrated soccer program in the history of television in Spain.
The broadcast, which on Monday night celebrated its 30th anniversary, was born on Canal + with the intention of going beyond the regular football gathering or the summary of the goals of the League match.
That football went from being something that everyone knew to something that everyone could like is largely the fault of this format.
He made his debut on October 8, 1990 under the leadership of Nacho Lewin and Jorge Valdano as a technical analyst.
In the same broadcast, a model of the old Atocha field could appear on which an analyst dissected the way in which Betis had defended Real Madrid that weekend, a puppet by Louis Van Gaal (his head made of bricks is living history of this country) sharing the scene with Aznar or Jesulín de Ubrique, a ranking with the ugliest footballers in the First Division, the infinite wisdom of Julio Maldonado, perhaps the greatest connoisseur and best communicator that this sport has given, the interviews of Mónica Marchante, that by now he must have a master's degree in managing soccer leaders or a selection of images in which someone could be seen sweeping the grass before a game or a spectator falling asleep in his seat while another emptied a bottle of water on the head.
“What was done then was very different.
We decided that soccer was everything.
Not only the players and the coaches, but also what happened in the stands, what the utilleros did.
It was everything and it belonged to everyone.
That approach is still valid today.
It is still what we sustain ourselves on, ”says Carlos Martínez (Madrid, 1964), current host of the program.
Martínez joined Canal + in 1990 and between 2016 and 2018 he was head of sports at Movistar +, on whose channel #Vamos the program has been broadcast for two years.
There was a time when in the stands of the stadiums in Spain there were almost as many banners encouraging the footballers as messages directed to
What the eye does not see,
the section of
The day after
that was dedicated to hunting furtive images of everything that surrounds a soccer game.
A
star system was
even created
for regulars in this section.
From the lord of the Bilbao txapela to the eighty-year-old Betis fan.
The camera also approached the game and through its microphones moments for history such as the discussion between the referee and the linesman in that historic Zaragoza-FC Barcelona in 1996, from which almost nobody remembers the result but nobody forgets the hilarious talk between the referee, Mejuto González, and his lineman, Rafa Guerrero.
“I remember sitting on a bench before starting a game and Michael Robinson coming up to me, sitting next to me and starting to chat with me.
The cameras at three feet ”, recalls Gerard López (Granollers, 1979), former soccer player of FC Barcelona or Valencia CF and together with Álvaro Benito (Salamanca, 1976), collaborator and analyst of the program today.
“I came to Madrid when I was 14 years old to play for Real Madrid.
All of us who came from abroad were in a boarding house and we had a seat to be able to have Canal Plus and watch the games and, of course,
The day after.
I remember days of warming up before the game and being careful not to say any bullshit and go out on
The Day After
.
If they caught you, the fun in the dressing room was huge, ”says Benito.
The prominent presence of former players such as Álvaro or Gerard, and before others such as Santiago Cañizares or Lobo Carrasco, has also helped to offer a different image of the footballer.
The day after has
turned the former players who have participated into true communicators, helping greatly to tear down many of the topics about them that have been forged after decades of monosyllables in interviews on the pitch and phrases made at press conferences.
"It is unfair because there are many footballers and we are all different, but it is true that here you become a communicator, because you are a real part of the team and you learn a lot," says Benito.
Another element that has been key in the evolution of the program and that explains a lot about what Michael Robinson was like - it was announced yesterday that the set on which the program is broadcast will bear his name - is the section that for 26 years starred Raúl Ruiz (Logroño , 1966), a former footballer who only spent one year in Primera.
Robinson gave him a camera and asked him to go and show us that little football that so little appears in the media.
“I didn't know anything.
To be able to do my section I had to subscribe to all the provincial newspapers, talk to all my acquaintances about my stages in 2ªB ”.
Ruiz made memorable pieces.
“I remember going to Sanlúcar because they had told me that the coach of the local team was fed up with the municipal band rehearsing in the stands of the stadium at the same time that the team was exercising.
The players did not hear his slogans.
I arrived and that day the band decided not to rehearse.
I went to a nearby town and on car trips, I brought the whole band from there four by four to the field.
I really wanted to see if the coach could be heard or not.
They started to play, I approached the guy and he was smiling.
'Man, is that these play well ”.
The day after he
faces his most complicated season.
It is very likely that there will be no spectators on the football fields until 2021, which disembowels the broadcast of the elements that underpin its idiosyncrasy.
But it will survive.
Carlos Martínez says: “There will always be a 17-year-old boy like Raúl with enormous talent and a story worth telling.
And while football stories happen, there will be The day after.
On Sunday Ansu Fati made his debut with Spain.
17 years, one goal.
A story.