alone

I don't know if I've told you this story, but I prefer the risk of repetition to the benefit of explanation.

When in 2003 I proposed to Ernesto Valverde to be Athletic's manager, I needed few arguments to convince him because he knew, and still knows, the club as well as I do.

In the good and in the bad (because yes, there is also something bad in the fascination of Athletic).

His answer was affirmative and we agreed that I would call his agent to close the financial issues.

He promised me this would be easy, and it was, and then we went over the bigger issues.

We must not forget that our president Javier Uría had just passed away and that the situation was shrouded in a dark cloud of sadness, so we began to project ourselves into the future.

With the confidence we had in each other (we still have) and my audacity as a sports director, I made a confession: “Ernesto, you know that from this very moment I start looking for a coach”.

His face went from puzzled to slightly angry and my brain realized that I had said too much.

But my rational part began to unravel reasons such as health, lack of motivation, perhaps a loss of enthusiasm when knowing the first team locker room from the inside... I don't know, all the arguments that occurred to me to get out of that mess, to get that leg out of the mud I had gotten myself into.

As Ernesto is intelligent and, above all, generous, he turned the page quickly and the anecdote usually livens up some of the meals that we have shared afterwards.

But the story appeared in my memory when I saw Julen Lopetegui say goodbye to the Sevilla fans in the midst of a strange catharsis.

His final was written (although the game had ended in victory) and Monchi, his sports director, accompanied him at that sad moment.

Because there are applause that can be very sad.

Perhaps the most painful manifestation of sadness is those farewell applause, at a funeral, in absolute black.

I don't know, I'm not aware of the interiorities of that story that only the protagonists are in a position to discover with the consequent learning.

But it reminded me of those contradictory moments in sports management when you have to support your coach with all your might.

Not in vain is he a professional who a few months ago you went to convince at his house, with your presentation, your club's project and the blessings of your city, so that he would come with you to fight together in the same trench.

To fight together in the same kitchen, to fight together knowing that, between us, silences are more powerful than leaks.

Although this world of the immediate wants to deny this secular precept.

But your job, that of the sports director, also consists of anticipating what might happen, of having solutions if things get tragic and imagining that, as I told Ernesto, a depression, a bad mood, a family problem, An unforeseen event such as an irrefutable offer from another club could arrive and in that case we would have had to find an emergency solution.

You must have that solution worked out in the most secret drawer of your office.

It is the world of

(just in case), instead of

It would be said that goalkeepers are specialists in working in this type of situation.

Not in vain, in our career it is worth both the anticipation of the forward's action and the miraculous saving the ball in a prodigious save.

It is perhaps for this reason that the image of those two goalkeepers with a lost look and so alone in the midst of so much noise seemed so hard, so sad and so emotional.

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