At about seven in the morning on Sunday, after about nine hours by bus crossing Belarus from East to West, Raúl Alonso (Madrid, 1979) finally opened the door to his apartment. A house located on the main artery of Brest (on the border with Poland and with more than 300,000 inhabitants), which today lies silent due to the coronavirus. The team he coaches, the Meshkov Brest, the team that plays the Champions League, had traveled to Gomel , a city bordering Russia and Ukraine, with more than half a million residents, to play the last official handball match in Europe. "Although it was planned that it would be behind closed doors, there were the occasional spectator and there were masks in the stands," he details in a telephone conversation with EL MUNDO. "It was a little strange to see people, because it had been spoken differently, but since they had organized it ... The important thing was to play and leave as soon as possible," he adds.
Because Gomel, like Minsk , the country's capital, is one of the settings with the most Covid-19 infections. Hence, they completed about 18 hours of bus (round trip) in a single day, avoiding spending the night in any hotel in the city. Although it was almost the least, they returned with the victory over the bottom team (32-41) and, perhaps, they unknowingly certified their title as league champion: "There are rumors that it will be suspended, but ...".
In Belarus, despite the worldwide rumble that the coronavirus has unleashed, there is still no government decree to fight the battle against that invisible enemy. Moreover, its president, Aleksandr Lukashenko (65 years old), dressed in the uniform of a hockey team, provided his people with a blushing recipe to prevent infections: «Ice hockey, sauna, vodka and working on farms with the tractor ». And he added, paraphrasing the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata : "It is better to live on your feet than to die on your knees." The local media that spoke about the matter were investigated and each factory that has stepped on it has done so without any protection. Although hockey (national sport) has already closed its league, soccer also continues its course. Of course, fans prefer to see it on television. As of yesterday, in a country of 9.5 million people, there were 562 registered cases and eight deaths .
“People who work in supermarkets and gas stations already attend with gloves and masks. You even hear that hospitals are preparing for something more serious, "he explains by phone, 3,000 kilometers from his country. "As long as there are no restrictions from the Government of the country, we can do nothing but continue playing and focus on handball. Although it cannot be one hundred percent. It is a strange situation and we are living everything with a lot of tension. I have to take off my hat for my kids, "he admits.
More than half of their workforce is made up of players born outside Belarus: two Croats, two Serbs, two Slovenes, a Bosnian, a Montenegrin, a Frenchman and a Russian - "I speak to them in English and with the little Russian I manage" -. And, also, his right hand, the Barcelona player Sebastià Salvat . "We live with a lot of emotional energy through video calls and we don't know what we should do," says Alonso, who has his future wife in Germany, where he lived since he was 15, his mother in Madrid and part of his family in Santander.
The call of Manolo Cadenas
"In Spain they tell me that I am German and in Germany that I am Spanish," he recalls with a happy tone. During the five and a half years that he was an assistant to the Icelandic Gislason at the THW Kiel, he went on to win two Champions. He then flew alone in Austria (Tirol), until Manolo Cadenas claimed him in 2018 to accompany him on his adventure in Brest.
Cadenas was his coach in Santander when he was "nine or ten years old" and one of his childhood idols, since he directed Teka while he tried to make a place for himself in handball, and with whom he shared a flat for a year and medium, until 2019. «We speak handball almost daily on Skype . Now he is in León without being able to go to the pavilion and I, thousands of kilometers away, without confinement », he reflects out loud, also looking back and recovering those nostalgic photographs in Santander, where he moved from Madrid with nine years old. "Handball has allowed me to face Talant Dujshebaev as a coach or to share a team with Mats Olsson (goalkeeper coach of THW Kiel). I met them both when I was sweeping the track of the Sports Center of La Albericia ».
Happy memories that he happily recovers from the thunderous debris left by the coronavirus. “There is an uncertainty and a problem that affects everyone. In difficult times, a person always wants to have loved ones as close to emotional support as possible, "he continues. “If this changes, maybe I can go back to Germany, although it is not clear. The borders are closed and you can only go by plane, although it is not known if there are flights. The situation is very heavy, but we are not going to panic, "he concludes, hoping that the next call, when everything is over, will be to discuss his successes with Brest.
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