Álvaro Benito: "What nobody tells you is that, even if you give everything and suffer like a bastard, things go wrong"

• Clemente "I was the best and nobody said it, but I don't give a damn"

One step, one misstep, changes everything.

Álvaro Benito, 19 years of pure talent and already a regular starter at Real Madrid, was advancing down the wing on his U21 debut against Slovakia when his left knee cracked while supporting.

A crack that killed a race that November 12, 1996 on the grass of the Insular de Las Palmas.

What should have been a seven-month injury was the end of a footballer ... And the beginning of a successful musician.

And from a coach on hiatus.

And of a eat

star tarista.

Because they say that when one door closes another opens, but Álvaro must live in a loft, all open.

Not a closed door.

It makes me very strange to give you a retro interview, but life has run over us.

Totally.

What disturbs me the most in this life is the passage of time, which is very fast.

I'm going to turn 44 studs in December and I can't quite believe it, it seems to me that it was yesterday when I got injured.

Is incredible.

I don't know how it happened, but we have been half our lives.

In this half life you have had time to live three complete: footballer, musician and commentator.

It has spread to you.

Yes, but let's not kid ourselves: all this has been because the footballer thing ended too soon.

I was just a kid when I got injured and if that didn't happen, nothing after that would have happened.

A curious thing happened to me in a bar in Madrid.

A girl approached and told me that, when she was doing her journalism internship, she interviewed me at the Real Madrid Sports City and asked me what I would have done if I had not been a footballer.

I replied that I would have a rock group.

At least in that I was right.

Plan B was clear to you.

Music has always been in my family.

My father played the guitar and before I was injured I had already bought an electric one.

But I did not imagine that I could be a professional musician.

I had fun playing Kurt Cobain for a while and playing the Fender with distortion, but with no other pretense than having fun for a bit.

I was only thinking about football.

Despite standing out from a very young age, you held out at Real Ávila, without making the leap to a large quarry, until you were 14 years old.

Was it your parents' way of protecting you?

Yes. My father did not even tell me at the time that at the age of 12 Real Madrid came to look for me and said no, that I was still very young.

But then everything happened very fast.

We had a great year with the Real Ávila cadet, they took me to the Spanish under-15 team while under-14 and they already wanted to sign me Madrid, Barcelona and Valladolid.

Everything precipitated and I came to Madrid alone to find my life while still a child.

It was the moment because, although I already had very good conditions, I needed a competition that would force me to improve.

And in just four years I made my way to the First Division.

Were you already a Madridista as a child?

Madrid always threw me a lot, but I was not crazy about the team because I had family in Valladolid and the first field I went to watch games was Zorrilla.

But the target was leaving me and I made the decision to go to Madrid.

My father preferred Valladolid, because I could live there with my grandparents.

And once inside, you become more and more Madridista, because defending a team's jersey creates an incredible attachment to you.

That is why it surprises me so much when I hear that it is not a plus to be a fan of the team you play for.

Of course it is.

I do not mean that whoever does not feel the shield cannot defend it well, but it is evident that feeling it gives you one more point.

You still caught the time of the pensions for the canteranos, nothing of the current luxurious residences.

Yes, they actually put me in a pretty shabby pension, to be honest.

My parents wanted to see it before leaving me there, but they hid it from them, they told them it was under construction.

So the day they took me away, my poor parents did like Pijus Magnificus in

but the other way around: instead of holding back laughter, they held back crying thinking about where they left their son.

They told me to try it for a month and then decide if I wanted to go back, but I didn't even think about it.

Guti, Raúl, Víctor, you ... He is one of the great generations of the Madrid quarry.

It was unbelievable.

And there was more: Fernando Morán, Iván Pérez or Luis Martínez also played in the First Division.

I got scared.

In my head, Madrid was the planet Mars and everyone who was there was Oliver Atom.

I didn't know if I was going to give the level and, at that age, the kids are always a bit bastards, so they were waiting for us at the boarding house.

But I was lucky that the first weekend there was a tournament in Extremadura with Sevilla, Barça and Atlético.

We won it and they named me best player.

From there I began to feel comfortable and they respect me.

The photographic memory that soccer players have with the details of matches from 30 years ago never ceases to amaze me.

It's true, there are games that you remember with absolute clarity.

Football requires such high concentration when you are playing that what you do and what is happening around you is burned into your mind.

I remember missed passes in juniors, so imagine the tournament in which I made my debut for Madrid ... Anyway, that final was recorded by Victor's father and he gave copies to all of us, so I watched it more times later.

The first day you saw Guti and Raúl, did you already say: "Be careful with these"?

The thing about Guti ... My first training session with Madrid was an 11 against 11 game and Guti, who was the smallest at that time, gave an exhibition of not believing.

I don't know how many times he hagged us all.

So, at the end, I ask about the blonde and they tell me: "Well, he's a substitute."

I almost went home (laughs).

And I had already met Raúl when he was still at Atleti, we had been teammates in the Madrid team.

I knew he was really good, but I never imagined that he would magnify his performance when he turned pro.

That is almost impossible.

In reality, none of us expected the piece of footballer that he became.

Guti's unpredictable talent and Raúl's absolute reliability, the two extremes of football.

Raúl is the smartest footballer I have seen on the field, he had the intuition to know what was going to happen before the others and that is a huge advantage, because you always arrive a second before the place where you have to be.

Guti was not even half normal, but in that Castilla there was a boy called Kiko Torres and he was the one who really impressed me.

We did call him Oliver Atom, but then he suffered injuries and ended up playing in Second Division, in Scotland ... He didn't have the career we expected.

If you are good, advancing in the lower categories is easy, but the last step, from the subsidiary to professional football, is very difficult.

Your head has to click and a lot of people stay because it doesn't.

Was it difficult for you to make that click?

It will be bad to say this, but I had been very well in training football because I had always been a figure and the best of my generation.

I had never needed a bonus, but when I did preseason for the first time with the first team something changed in my head.

I had the maturity to put myself to work seriously, demand more of myself and become more competitive.

That's why I worked.

Conditions without the mentality are nothing in professional football.

How does an elite wardrobe receive a kid?

Good at first, because you are not a threat, just a kid who goes up to train and goes home, but when you start taking someone's job away things get complicated.

You stop being so funny and you have to wake up.

I quickly realized that no one there was going to give me anything.

Some are going to help you something, others are going to get past you and some are going to trip you up, but you have to ride it yourself, look out for yourself and expect nothing from anyone.

You can't make the mistake of being open-mouthed looking at the guys you had on your trading cards two days before, because they see you as a threat and they're not going to make anything easy for you.

The super-elite is like that and you have to wake up really fast.

Did someone sponsor you?

Fernando Hierro, Chendo and Míchel helped me.

They gave me advice on how to deal with the press, recommended habits, how to negotiate the first contract ... But once on the field, everyone goes about their business and no one is going to give you a cable.

You are competition and you are judged as an adult.

Either you are worth it or you are not.

It is the jungle.

Real Madrid does not wait for anyone.

Valdano is the one who bets on you.

Yes, and in the beginning everything went very well.

I started with a very good performance.

I was never afraid.

I was nervous, of course, because it was the most important exam of my life, for which I had been preparing for years and for which I had sacrificed many things, so I did not want to screw it up, but I felt that I was prepared and that this was my place .

Those months with Valdano were great for me.

But in the middle of the season they fire Jorge ...

And Arsenio Iglesias arrives.

Everything got complicated there, although it was a very good learning experience.

I was playing very well, but Arsenio bet on the veterans and I felt that he was not valuing my work.

It was the first adversity that I had had in my sporting life and I managed it fatally.

I reacted like a child, I deliberately began to train badly and the only one harmed was me.

So the following year, with Capello, I did just the opposite.

He wasn't counting on you.

No. I was coming out of an injury and came to preseason very badly.

Fabio told me to find a loan for me.

But in those 10 or 15 days, when I found another team, I got in shape, did some very good training sessions and he changed his mind.

He asked me to stay, I did ... and in the first 6 or 7 days he didn't even call me.

But I had already learned my lesson and every week I worked more, until I won the position and played 8 or 9 games in a row as a starter ... Then I got injured.

How do you remember that moment?

I don't think about it, I've never wanted to look back.

The only thorn that remains stuck in me is not having seen my sports fullness when I was 24 or 25 years old, knowing what that Álvaro footballer would have been like, what my ceiling was ... But that's life.

More than the injury itself, what I remember is that at the beginning I did not worry much.

Everyone told me that in seven months I was going to be playing again and I assumed it, at no time was I aware that this could go wrong, that they could operate badly and complicate everything.

And that was what happened.

How many times did you have surgery?

Nine in four years.

Operation, postoperative, recovery ... Over and over again.

It was a difficult time, very hard physically and mentally, a process that I do not wish on anyone.

It was very difficult for me to assume it.

Hours and hours alone, prostrate with pain, lying around at home ... That's when I learned the most difficult lesson in life, the one that nobody tells you because with health problems everyone repeats those beautiful slogans: yes You try hard, everything comes out, you can cure yourself of anything if you want it very hard ... That is a lie.

I did all that multiplied by a thousand and I did not succeed.

Because sometimes, even if you give everything and a little more, even if you suffer like a bastard, things go wrong.

That is very difficult to assume because nobody tells you.

When did you understand that it was time to give up?

It was difficult for me to decide, but once I retired it was a relief.

I knew from the first operation that it was not the same and it got worse with each surgery.

When I returned to play, I was not even 50% of the footballer from before.

My last year at Getafe I was just waiting for a miracle that obviously did not come.

They operated on me in the United States and they told me that I had a 15% chance to return to practicing professional sports and I succeeded, but the dedication that it demanded and the daily pains for the level that I could give was not worth it.

With all due respect, I saw myself in the Second Division and in the first game I was totally gone, thinking what the hell had happened with my life to be playing a Getafe-Levante Second Division.

I felt that my place was to be one of the best footballers in this country and it was very hard for me to accept that it was not going to happen.

But the worst thing was the uncertainty of whether I could play again or even walk at a time when my knee did not even allow me to take a walk.

So when I quit it was a release.

I had tried with all my might and it couldn't be.

Did you mentally manage the withdrawal well?

Yes, because the worst was over.

I had suffered so much with all the operations, with being eight times rehabilitating like a bastard to be told that I had to operate again, I dealt so much with the frustration that I became a teacher.

So I landed at the age of 24 in real life without really knowing where to go, but calm.

It was a moment of total acceptance.

How many friends disappeared with the injury?

Everybody.

Nobody stays in a situation like that.

But I understand that this is life: friends and loves depend on the situations.

When things got a bit dodgy, there were several left;

when it got very dodgy, there was one left, and when it became impossible, there was no one left.

And I am not complaining, everyone has to live their life and when you are handicapped for so many years, unable to move, the others cannot crawl with you.

Bielsa says that in defeat you are the plagued one and the same thing happens with this: nobody wants to be with a guy who can't do anything.

We were kids and people wanted to go out, meet aunts, travel ... and I couldn't do any of that.

No one is going to come to see you home every day, it is normal, and it took so long in time that, in the end, no one was left.

------------

Not even Álvaro the footballer was left, the left-hander who was going to take over the world, the talent of whom Raúl said that "injuries have deprived the world of seeing a great man," he cut off football as one who breaks a toxic relationship and runs away .

Fast and away.

For years he wanted nothing to do with the ball, but he drew the old Fender and formed Pignoise.

The pop-rock group went from being a curiosity about Álvaro's past to a youth success as a result of one of his songs,

Nothing to lose

, was chosen as the tune of the series

Paco's men

.

Álvaro was famous again ... for another generation and with a very different lifestyle.

Did you switch to music to make up for lost playtime?

The truth is yes, but I did it from total unconsciousness.

We had the bad luck and the blessing at the same time to get together three kids who we had no fucking idea of ​​touching or how the business worked.

It took a long time for someone to give us good advice: "You are very bad, but the songs have something, so train up."

We did it and it went very well.

It was a long process, people believe that I retired from football and began to succeed in music, but it took five or six years of insisting and learning.

When the pitch came from

We weren't ready yet, but we did what Di Stéfano said: "I don't deserve it, but I beat it."

Rock does not seem the dominant music in the football locker room ...

No, right now there is no hope.

I have trained 16, 17 and 18 year old kids and you play them a Queen song and they don't know who they are.

Queen, huh.

I won't tell you anymore if you tell them about Arctic Monkeys.

But before there was everything, Alkorta, Raúl, Amavisca or Redondo were all about rock.

For this reason, I do not like when it is generalized with footballers, because they are so different from each other as in any profession.

To say that the footballer is a poorly formed garrulo sells more, but it is a lie.

There is everything.

As a footballer, did you have time to fall into stardom or did it all end too soon?

He didn't give me time, but I don't think I'd ever become this type of footballer either.

Because of my environment, my concerns, my education ... What happens is that you never know, because it is true that when you are a footballer you live in a parallel reality and whoever tells you that you are not lying.

Getting out of this bubble is very difficult.

Me because I was injured, but if I had played until I was 33 and had been out of the real world for 15 years, I would have ended up thinking that life was normal.

So landing after retirement is very difficult for many players.

But I like to think that I wouldn't have changed so much that I didn't recognize myself.

He would not have fallen for most of the footballer's cliches.

But it is inevitable that fame and money being so young will put you in an unreal world.

Yes.

I was a normal 18-year-old boy who lived in a rented apartment in Barrio del Pilar with a partner, trained in the mornings and went to Complutense to study law in the afternoons.

And in about three weeks, I couldn't go anywhere where there were people.

I told my father that I did not want to be famous and he replied that then he did not want to play for Real Madrid.

But it was very uncomfortable not being able to go to the movies or having to start studying at a distance because I couldn't even go to university.

In the end you are forced to change your life and I understand that many footballers end up in those bubbles that seem strange and unreal to us.

I wanted to be a notary, because I was very nerdy, but in the end, look, three different jobs and all facing the public.

Is it much more out of date in music than in football?

Yes much more.

It's that football doesn't allow it.

You can go out one day after playing if you don't train the next day, but since you never drink, you have three drinks and you're going backwards.

That is the memory I have of going out as a footballer: stringing together three or four weeks in which the calendar does not allow you to go out and, the day you go out, you go to the third cup like a wildebeest.

Music is another story, it is the best job there is because you are your own boss and since you do not have to be accountable to anyone ... And that fame already came to me with almost 30 years and more baggage, but what? how can you not get the clamp with the music?

You do not have schedules, it does not require you physically, you go from port to port ...

You added to that the boom of going out in 'Los Hombres de Paco'.

You have a moment of total adolescent sex symbol there.

(Laughs) Yes, but actually that was a difficult time for me.

I dreaded being on a series.

I think that I overcame all the fears that remained: if I was able to put myself in front of the cameras, I could do anything.

In that sense it was a brown, but in the rest of things I am not going to say that it did not help.

------------

But, from the looks of it, even the life of a rock star can tire you.

It's hard to believe, I know, but, suddenly, Álvaro put the brakes on.

Maybe she wanted to get more sleep, buy a dog, or retire tank tops for good.

Or, perhaps, the explanation is simpler (or more cheesy): we all have a true love that, if he whistles, you go.

And the football whistled.

So the ex-rocker ex-player turned his life around like a sock for the second time.

Seriously, who in their right mind leaves the life of a musician?

It was a natural process.

I had been away from football for more than 10 years, but I was already a little tired of spending my life on the road, always away from home.

Pedrerol called me to collaborate on

And, although at first I said no, he convinced me and the football bug came back to me.

I realized that I liked to analyze the game and I got the title of coach.

This coincided with a break in the group and, when Real Madrid called me to train at the quarry, I had already put the music on hold because football was a full-time job.

Is your goal still being a coach?

No no no.

The panorama has changed a lot.

If I had had a normal promotion in Madrid, surely I would have continued down the path of a professional coach, but since what happened happened and they offered me to grow on TV, I no longer think about being one.

Now I am very happy, I love what I do and I live much calmer, without that exaggerated pressure of being down there.

I have even been able to return to music.

To give up what I have now, an irrevocable offer would have to come and there is nothing irreplaceable in life.

You say "what happened happened" and what happened was that Madrid fired you for being critical of the team on the radio.

Yes. I understood it and I still understand it.

What happens is that I feel that I can be more critical of Real Madrid because they are my team and the last thing I can wish for is evil.

All the fans of a team are freer when talking about him because we love him.

It is true that I was very critical after a Classic, but never to hurt.

I understand that there may be some incompatibility between working in the media and at the club, but when they hired me it seemed good to them.

Perhaps it could have been solved in a better way, they could have given me a choice between training or commenting.

But whoever decides considered that it was sufficient reason for a dismissal and I assume it.

Also, from there life has done nothing but smile at me.

It is very nice to be at Real Madrid, but I had already learned in the past that life does not end there.

After this bumpy ride, do you still love football?

Sure, how am I going to hate football?

If I had not played for Real Madrid, surely I would not be where I am now.

I am a privileged person, living from counting football is the host, the fucking host.

Using a phrase from my friend Cañizares, see if the football that still feeds us is great.

Soccer is unstoppable.

------------

Álvaro is today the commentator who has achieved the unthinkable: that Atleti and Barça fans rejoice that a Real Madrid player is analyzing their matches.

A rapidly rising star ... again.

He is happy and assures that this third reinvention is the final one.

But don't trust him.

There is still time to be a notary.

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