my coaching lineup

Valencia arrives at San Mamés to settle a place in the Cup final with Athletic. And with Valencia I get requests to attend to different media to assess this magnificent semifinal that one of the kings of the Cup, Athletic, is contesting with a club, Valencia, which in its time was known as "bronco and butler".

Clubs that are capable of, with the help of the energy given off by two legendary stadiums, two dedicated fans, transforming a decisive tie into a historic comeback.

These types of games have a curious effect of bringing characters like the one who writes to them into the news.

Suddenly, the media remembers you, you have more calls in three days than in six months, more messages, more friends and more memories to share.

And those waves have the characteristic that as they come they go and the telephone becomes mute, absent of demands, and you regret some noes that you have had to give because now, in the post-match, you have all the time in the world to attend to whoever be.

But you are no longer current, you are already past.

This reunion with the chess has allowed me to remember my first official match in San Mamés, in the one with the goal, when I discovered an enclosure, sacred to me, that I had only seen in photos and that I recognized from those goals with some nets held by an iron characteristic, already disappeared with the 82 World Cup, but for me they were the quintessence of football.

A game in which I went devoted to admiring Iribar and from which I left impressed by the quality, skill and class of a blond Dutchman who dressed in white and was called Rep. Un grande.

These reunions also allow me to remember some anecdotes from my time in Valencia, among them that I had had more coaches in two seasons in Valencia than in the rest of my career.

Pure statistics, but Paco Roig, president at the time, did not like my mathematical precision very much and it was good that he let me know.

In that review of the benches I meet Carlos Parreira, Luis Aragonés, Jorge Valdano and Claudio Ranieri, with José Manuel Rielo as interim after the dismissal of the world champion Parreira.

If there were lineups in the coaching world, I don't think there would be many more powerful and diverse than this one I just recited to you.

And that leads me to a final reflection on the much vaunted question of styles and their conveniences.

About those debates that many want to take from the purely football to turn them into a certain superiority that seems to have to do with creativity.

I can tell you that I believed the scripts of all those coaches that many will consider contradictory.

Every time I heard them talk and explain how they planned to beat our rivals and lead us to success, to win, I believed them.

To 100%.

Okay, some of you will say that since I was a goalkeeper, playing with two pivots or three forwards didn't have much influence, but I'll tell you that if there are too many players in attack, it means that in the defensive part there are many meters to distribute between few players.

And when you see the back of your defenses too close, it is a sign that the opponent is going to have more than two opportunities to test you very seriously.

You see, he must have been a naive guy when it came to styles.

So naive that I have not asked Clemente and Cruyff to play in that line-up of coaches.

Pure dynamite that today, an exception, have remained on the bench.

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