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Diego Martínez: "The most beautiful things in life cannot be measured, they are sensed"

2021-04-08T03:51:08.377Z


Diego Martínez, the coach who has led Granada Second to the Europa League, reflects on the formation that has allowed him to lead the team that today receives United in the quarterfinals


Granada went up to First in 2019 led by Diego Martínez (Vigo, 40 years old).

He was accompanied by a squad of players whose core will be the same as tonight (9pm, Movistar LC) will host Manchester United in Los Cármenes to play the Europa League quarterfinals.

Few times has Spanish football recorded such a dizzying collective journey.

Question.

What does the tie with Manchester mean?

Answer.

We have to face it as a prize that we have won.

It would be difficult for Granada to play a preseason friendly with United.

With all my respect.

Getting here is a success.

All that is added is success multiplied by ten.

P.

Granada has played 47 official matches this season.

More than anyone in Europe.

Is the plague of injuries a consequence?

R. There

are many factors: the Covid, the atypical preseason, a squad that is not used to this density of competition ... We have been playing three games a week since September.

In our squad only three players were used to playing that often and all of them are over 30 years old.

Soldier with 35, Jorge Molina with 38, and Gonalons with 32. In order to be competitive, we need to overexert ourselves.

We needed it last year and now we need it multiplied by three, because we had three competitions until the quarterfinals of the Cup. Our weakness is our virtue because the team there has taken an opportunity.

Which one?

Well, adapt and optimize your resources to the maximum.

Q:

The only advantage of this situation is that in your locker room no one is bothered by not having minutes?

R.

That always!

Because there are always some who play more and others less.

I am very lucky to have a great wardrobe.

We have generated, after three years, a very honest and sincere coexistence and communication.

This year we have had to interpret the information because even if the player is tired and should not play, he wants to play.

Everything is mixed: his desire to play and his commitment to the team, with the medical fact of when he should play and what risk we take.

That is an art: we build the bridge while walking on it.

Q.

Is creating empathy with the player an art or a science?

R.

We have to generate a climate of performance that is done with empathy and also with conflict, with debate, with opposition of ideas.

It is clear that the most beautiful things in life cannot be measured: they are intuited.

Love cannot be measured.

We have a part of data management and the possibilities that science and technology give us, but that is only a complement.

Here is a question of smell, of art.

Intuition is given by non-conscious knowledge accumulated for a long time.

The sensitivity of the moment is important.

I had a volleyball teacher at the faculty, Toño Santos, who took us the first day and said: "Do you want to know who is the best coach?"

He took the board and drew us a very large face with very large eyes, a very large nose, very large ears and a very small mouth.

"Speak the fair and get all you can!"

It is always difficult to speak fair.

This is very simple: we are together to try to win games, in order to win games we need to speak a common language, for that we need to agree

P.

Can the coach become invisible in these times when everything that happens on the field is so calculated?

R.

If I am speaking here now, it is to respect my authenticity and my essence.

Each one has its own way of acting and the player detects it.

Detect authenticity.

Authenticity forgives the mistake.

Superficiality does not forgive error.

When you are authentic, you handle mistakes in a more human way.

Speaking just is not the same as speaking little.

You have to give each person and at all times what is necessary.

I have been with my team for three years: I am lucky to know quite well what some of my players need;

but their needs have changed over the years.

We technicians have to detect the changes.

This is very simple: we are together to try to win games, in order to win games we need to speak a common language, for that we need to agree.

P.

In recent years football has become more complex because it is increasingly difficult to receive the ball in time.

Does that make the work of technicians more important, insofar as they must provide solutions to an increasingly difficult problem to solve?

A.

The starting and finishing point is the player.

Everything we do is by and for them, so that in an organized way they can choose to win more games.

This is not achieved in the same way on all teams.

Not all players have the same characteristics.

But if every day there is less space and less time, in the long run there will be a technical improvement, because you will have to get used to playing in less space, at a higher pace.

This inflection has occurred in basketball, handball and other sports.

Let's not forget that we are in a very particular social moment.

The teams that live in temperamental cultures, with greater social contact, are suffering a little more from those empty stadiums

P.

For a while Granada played very well with 4-3-3.

If you had the entire squad, would you think 4-3-3 would be the best scheme to respond to these new demands?

R.

I do not believe that every coach has a model.

I think that in looking for an organization suitable to the characteristics of my players, so that together we can be better.

I believe in the facilitating trainer of a language or an organization.

We vary a lot the distribution axes, the structure, the drawing, whatever you want to call it.

We have been chameleons.

Even during games.

This year, given the possibility of incorporating Milla, and having everyone healthy, we understood that 4-3-3 was the best way to structure the team because we had different midfielders and complementary interiors.

For example: Milla, Montoro, and Yangel, can play in the three middle positions.

Gonalons, Ramón Azeez and Eteki, are more specific to a certain position.

That allowed us to free the extremes more: Kenedy, Darwin, Soro, Puertas, or even Luis Suárez… It was a bit what we wanted.

The 4-3-3 was the only system that we needed to incorporate but we needed to continue feeding the systems that had brought us here.

We are not a very dominating team and there will be times when we are interested in doing other types of games and varying the drawing helps us a lot.

That in a team is wealth as long as you can do it in a stable and harmonious way within the same game.

Sometimes you change the game system and that does not translate into automation or recognizable stability.

We have nothing to do either financially or at the squad level with teams that precede us in the table or that have fewer points.

We come from Second with a limited budget and we have to use all our resources to the maximum and feel that we are squeezing ourselves.

P.

Chelsea-Atlético generated a debate about the rhythm of the game.

Do you think that the League is played at a slower pace than in England or Germany and that makes us less competitive?

R.

I do not have so many elements of judgment to make comparisons exclusively based on rhythm.

Each League is conditioned by the profile of the predominant player.

But if you examine the champions and runners-up of European football in the last decade, we conclude that the health of Spanish football is the best in our history.

The present always devours the debates: we focus on the present.

Germany was world champion brilliantly in Brazil.

But in 2008 and 2010 they eliminated them in the final and semifinals when they were on the right track.

Only one can win!

Then each league has its culture: the Premier has always been more 'box-to-box'.

The key is the adaptation of each team and I think that in recent years Spanish football has always known how to be competitive.

From there, there are years better than others.

Let's not forget that we are in a very particular social moment.

The teams that live in temperamental cultures, with greater social contact, are suffering a little more from those empty stadiums.

P.

Granada is one of the teams that plays the longest in the League.

Why?

R.

I try not to think only about our players but about what makes the rival uncomfortable;

and in what disposition we are.

Lately it has cost us much more to press up because we do not have enough energy to maintain it throughout the game.

When were we most faithful to ourselves?

The games against Napoli, the game with PSV ... Without ceasing to be vertical, we had greater ball circulation.

But I would not like to be a team that if it does not have a good day because it is not precise, or because they pressure it well, it does not have the resources to be able to skip a line.

I insist that we be chameleonic: in order to be competitive we need to handle different registers and facets, because that drives the rival out of control.

The most difficult thing in football is to give the game what it needs.

I like to press up, recover and attack again.

But you are not always in that disposition or precision, or tactical adjustment, or on a physical level.

And the rival complicates you.

What I'm not worth is making excuses: 'I'm good at this but they finish me off an easy corner';

'I'm good at this but in the last minutes I don't know how to defend my goal in a low block', and this is something that happens to all the teams in the world, because the one that is winning by the minimum will be sunk in their area.

I like to have arguments for everything.

We must be chameleon.

I would not like to be a team that if they do not have a good day because they are not precise, or because they pressure well, they do not have resources to be able to skip a line

P.

He felt the vocation to train from a very young age.

Was it because you had an idea and thought it would give you a strategic advantage?

R.

The ideas of the coaches are not special: what is truly seductive is the idea of ​​a team.

That's why we invest a lot of effort in generating performance climates.

In order to develop a methodology adapted to the profile of the players.

And not only to the technical profile but also mental.

We all learn differently, we all motivate ourselves differently.

Q.

What is the use of having a university degree?

R. It

has fueled my passion.

It has helped me to organize my ideas, to know where I have to go for information, how I can handle it.

I am very proud to have studied at the Granada School of Sports.

I feel it as a strength, although my mother always says: "This one went through the university, but the university did not go through him."

I feel that it did happen for me.

I have drawn a lot from other sports.

Our quarry director, Luis Fradua, was my teacher.

We eat together and I know that in the conversation it will lead us to touch on topics that will go beyond the quarry.

As with David Cárdenas, the basketball teacher, or Juan Antón, the handball teacher… They are people who nurture you from their perspective.

That gives you a lot of keys to different strategies.

I have always tried to transfer the climate of hall sports to football: communication, permanent attention to what is being done in a small space.

I am interested in the creative method and the management of different work groups, be it Phil Jackson in the Bulls or a film director.

Film directors look like soccer coaches.

They do a very technical job.

They guide.

But the difference and the quality is determined by the actor himself.

Q.

Which film director feels that he did a great teamwork?

R.

Life is Beautiful

by Roberto Benigni has all the possible emotions.

You feel the whole fan.

Q.

Does the success or failure of a coach also depend on the emotion they can generate?

R.

One of the greatest compliments that I have felt towards my team is that it infects, that it transmits.

Even in a bad game.

The team generates an emotion in you.

Making a movie or writing a book is something very technical that can have an emotional impact.

It is proven that the relationship of the brain, the heart and the gut go hand in hand.

Science lags behind intuitions.

We are primarily moved by emotions.

Q.

If you can't excite your players, do you think they won't be able to comply with a tactical order either?

A.

They have it.

The coach does not provide.

You have to help get it out.

The player who wants to motivate and believe first is the player: you have to find the way in which their intrinsic motivation comes out.

There is no coach with motivational pills.

Emotion magnifies everything.

We use it to correct a mistake without damaging confidence: being self-critical without damaging confidence is the most difficult.

Many times the emotional impact of a mistake that has meant a goal against you can be very useful.

Because you know that the player and the team will be willing that that does not happen to them again.

One of the most complex things that exist is teaching people not to make mistakes based on experiences that others have suffered.

Q.

How are errors minimized?

A.

Self-criticism from day to day is essential to create a climate of performance.

To be self-critical without damaging self-confidence, it is important that coaches be tolerant of error.

This is good for the health of a team.

You have to try not to make mistakes but you must tolerate it because it is inherent to the game.

They are non-linear dynamics.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2021-04-08

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