"Once speaking with Gaby Heinze, she recommended the Queen's Gambit series to me. When I watched it, I saw the girl, crack, who saw the chess pieces when she went to bed. I told the boys that
the best pacifier is to imagine the training that I'm going to do the next day
: the tasks, the rotations, how to make the changes, the game plan. I'm going to sleep thinking about it."
The speaker is Diego Martínez, the man who lives a dream.
At 45 years old, after walking from the bottom, he came to the technical direction of Boca.
And his dream is that of millions of people whose hearts beat to the rhythm of the Bombonera.
And that dream awakens illusions, of course.
But the man who started his career as coach in Ituzaingó shows that he has his feet on the ground.
And he lives this moment with prudence, responsibly assuming the great challenge that lies ahead of him.
"Sometimes I take my notebook next to my bed in case an idea occurs to me and I write it down," he confesses.
And he reveals the concern of his sisters: "I sleep little, yes. My sisters (he is the youngest in a family with two sisters older than him) are worried because I sleep too little," he said.
And he immediately confessed another intimacy."
Obsessive: Martínez only thinks about football... even when he sleeps.Photo: AFP
“The biggest challenge I have is management and achieving, not that they are happy because it is difficult for someone who does not play, but that they at least know and understand that they are decisions thinking about the best for the team.
Even if I'm wrong," he stated naturally about his work in a passage from the interview he gave to La Oral Deportiva, on Radio Rivadavia.
Martínez was calm and happy about the good victory that his Boca achieved against Belgrano on Sunday night at the Bombonera.
It's just that little by little it begins to settle in, after an irregular start.
Perhaps the equality achieved at the Monumental on February 25 against River, after losing, could have meant a turning point.
“I dreamed a lot about a night like the one we had with Belgrano.
We spoke with the boys about being able to confirm the good feelings we have as a team and it was important.
"This about recovering, about continuing to believe, the joy that Edi (Cavani) has become, about how people pushed us and because I think the team also transmitted it to the people," he said.
The tie at the Monumental was key for the start of Martínez's team. Photo: EFE
And regarding the growth he sees from the team, the former coach of Huracán and Tigre does not doubt: "
We deserve to have more points
, I think we pay with goals and adverse results than in another game or that another team does not end up paying. I understand that there have been moments of good play, of dominance, that represent us, but we have much more to grow."
With respect to Cavani, it is also a novelty for Martínez to direct a star of the Uruguayan's luminosity.
But the Gigoló is forceful when highlighting: "It is very important for us as a coaching staff, it requires us to improve and that the standard afterwards is to treat everyone as we do with Cavani, but also with Sergio (Romero) or Marcos (Rojo). We have the obligation to live up to them and that helps us grow."
Immediately, with a brief anecdote, he once again measured how much awareness he has of the place he came to occupy after his journey through all the categories of Argentine football.
"The day we started practice, I was imagining what the conversation with a team like Boca's was going to be like, just as at the time I had visualized that first contact with the Ituzaingó players. But this time it
was different, because it was very strong to look up and see Edi, Sergio, Marcos...
".
Cavani with Romero, two of the historic ones that Martínez directs. Photo: AP
What follows, assumed by the protagonist himself, is very descriptive.
"You try to have a map of what you want to say, but at that moment everything got mixed up and I don't remember what we talked about. That's why I later asked the guys on the coaching staff if I hadn't said anything stupid," he confessed, laughing. .
And the talk turns to the past.
To those beginnings in the First D. "Of course I look back, all the time. My journey makes me proud, I talk about it with my family, with my children who are trying to be soccer players, with my wife who accompanies me in everything, I "I see when I meet promotion coaches that they tell me that they see us as a mirror. But this does not stop, it is a path," said Martínez, the man who in a decade went from the mud of promotion to the blue and gold carpet and will seek to give it a Boca game identity.
The Boca de Martínez by Martínez himself
As for the names of the Boca team, in addition to repeatedly praising the experts, he had time and words of praise to highlight several of the players on the team, starting with Kevin Zenón, that reinforcement that he had between his eyes since his first appearance. chat with Juan Román Riquelme and that he got involved very quickly in the team and also in the people of Boca.
"We knew that Kevin was a player who felt the game in our own way. We had faced him and felt that he was a versatile player who participates in all phases of the game, who has intensity and who leaves the team in attacking positions.
And the main thing is that he is very good as a footballer
," he highlighted.
He immediately referred to the most recent revelation of his team: the kid Jabes Saralegui, whom he had already mentioned in his first contact with the press upon taking over at the club.
"I didn't know him from my youth days, he arrived later. He gave me a very good feeling since I saw him, he is one of the old midfielders, like we played, that traditional 4-3-1-2 midfielder. That eight that can give you play, breaking, reaching the goal, freshness...", he commented.
In that sense, about the influence that external opinions can have on their decisions (with the example of the situation that Frank Fabra is going through), the coach was blunt: "
We try to be genuine with what we say and train
. Regarding what externally I try not to be a fool, to be selective with what I consume or listen to. Because in Boca there are many opinions and sometimes so much can be confusing, so I try to keep a fresh head."
It is, clearly, an experience in every sense to manage Boca for Diego Martínez.
And that's how he lives it, thinks about it and analyzes the DT.
That he will have to continue submitting to popular judgment in each game, and he knows it.
But with that clarity to see it, at least he can more easily absorb what he has to live through.