The doormen tend to be wrapped in a halo of mystery and incomprehension.

Perhaps it has to do with his special performance on the field.

They are alone in a team sport.

The success is taken for granted.

The error marks them and, many times, condemns them.

Víctor Valdés has

already told how much he hated getting under the sticks when since he was a child his father pushed him to be what he had never wanted.

The pressure of the job, sometimes wild, pushes emotions to the limit.

Even unbearable.

Rober

t Enke

, also a former Barcelona goalkeeper, suffered his first depression shortly after failing a game against the humble Novelda.

His teammates blamed him.

His trainer.

The press.

The world.

Nothing was the same again.

If anything, worse.

He was 32 when he told his wife that he was taking the car to go to training.

She mustn't suspect anything.

The timing was apparently good.

Enke parked by the tracks and threw himself into the passing train.

He was going to be Germany's starting goalkeeper at the World Cup in South Africa. Goalkeepers are subjected to such scrutiny that, faced with a football in which everything is already viral and is discussed in real time, emotional stability is no longer just a necessity, but a requirement.

To Andoni Zubizarreta, when in his time as Barcelona's sports director he went to Mönchengladbach to hire

Marc-André ter Stegen

He was delighted by the clarity with which the German understood the position.

Not only was he not intimidated by arriving at a Camp Nou where so many goalkeepers were devoured, but he already hinted at a granite personality that would allow him to get away from many of those demons that usually torment goalkeepers. Ter Stegen was 22 when he was presented at the Camp Nou.

Next April he will turn 29 in the same place.

Without ever really being under suspicion, something very difficult in his position.

Amplifying even more the praise before the assiduity of exhibitions like the one starring in El Arcángel de Córdoba in the semifinals of the Super Cup.

Being a benchmark for both the youth of the team and for the newcomers to the booth.

Already become a captain who does not need to wear an armband.

His word goes to mass.

Without eccentricities that artificially enhance your figure.

No legends on which to build mythology or literature.

Nothing fills Ter Stegen more than walking along the beach of Castelldefels with his wife,

Dani

, and his son,

Ben

, who just turned one year old.

He helped his wife design her house

In his day, Ter Stegen was surprised to be praised for going to buy bread in the Gràcia neighborhood on a scooter.

Or for going down to the subway on occasion.

Or for coming to look for his partner at the faculty where he was studying Architecture, a career he has already completed.

He was just a mortal doing mortal things.

Why should it be different? After a season living in Barcelona's Eixample, and despite adapting to city life from day one while discovering places to enjoy coffee, one of his great passions, he decided to help his wife with design from his house in Castelldefels.

The two of them studied plans and made architectural and aesthetic solutions.

In fact, the doorman loves to dive into any design or architecture publication that falls into his hands.

He is very meticulous, and takes it to almost every area of ​​his life. Game consoles, the star entertainment of footballers, are not part of his daily life.

Nor is Parcheesi, so popular on trips and rallies.

But he does like to play chess from time to time.

Or take care of the plants in your garden, where you can spend hours.

Or cook the products that he is used to buying himself.

Products Km. 0

Ter Stegen is especially interested in

slow food

and buy local products, also called Km. 0. In addition to the ingredients and the way they are cooked, it takes into account the origin of the raw materials.

Prioritize fresh and local food.

Understand that, in addition to being healthier, it is a way to help the local economy.

Ter Stegen has gone from the first macrobiotic diets to consolidate a practically vegan one.

He considers that in the diet, in the so-called silent training, lies a good part of the stability in his performance, although, looking for causes and reasons for his promotion to the Olympus of goalkeepers, and beyond natural talent, the sources consulted for make this report converge in the same figure:

Jose Ramon de la Fuente

.

OR

Of the

, as Ter Stegen calls it.

He has been his goalkeeping coach since he arrived at Barcelona.

And he has always been by his side, without being affected by the successive changes in the coaching staff.

Ter Stegen has lived the stages of

Luis Enrique

, of

Ernesto Valverde

, of

Quique Setien

and now from

Ronald Koeman

.

And no one has dared to discuss the figure of De la Fuente.

In fact, during Setién's brief cycle, the Cantabrian brought with him a specific goalkeeper coach,

Jon Easter

.

But De la Fuente continued to do his job.

It was even he who sat on the bench and Pascua who went to the stands.

De la Fuente's corrections

"De la Fuente made some technical corrections that were key to its evolution," he says.

Juan Carlos Unzué

.

The historic goalkeeper from Osasuna, Barcelona and Seville among others, who had to leave his career as a coach after being diagnosed with ALS, was Luis Enrique's assistant when Ter Stegen signed for Barcelona in that summer of 2014. «When he arrived, Ter Stegen had a fairly wide leg rest.

It was excessively open.

If you spread your legs a little more, your knees are lower.

And also your center of gravity.

From there, reactivating to catch a ball below is easier.

But you have more difficult to go to a ball from above.

We saw it from the beginning and he corrected it.

And Unzué continues: «He was very good at taking low balls, but the stretch was complicated, that ability he now has to fly and take balls from above.

To understand each other, as the stops before the shots to the squad of

Januzaj

or

Zaldua

in the semifinals of the Super Cup.

De la Fuente closed that support a little.

He continued to be just as efficient on the low balls, but is now more reactive and has a better chance of making missed saves.

It was a small detail to resolve that has been very important in his improvement. ”Although there is another aspect no less relevant: the tough competition during his first two seasons as a Barça player with another goalkeeper,

Claudio Bravo

.

Luis Enrique decided that the Chilean would be the one to play the League.

Ter Stegen, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League.

This caused a most curious situation.

The German goalkeeper won his first and only European Cup, that of Berlin in 2015, in a season in which he did not play a single league game.

But Ter Stegen did not have enough.

And the world came over him at the Japan Club World Cup that same year.

Bravo was the headline.

The key talk with Unzué on a plane

«That was the key moment.

Marc had many doubts.

I was impatient.

More than a year had passed and he felt that it was his turn to play that World Cup.

I was with some anxiety.

He had doubts if this was his place.

If it was the best thing for him to continue like this, ”says Unzué, who recalls how it made him change his mind:“ We spent a good part of that trip back from Japan talking.

He could have left.

But I told him: 'If you have a little patience you will be Barcelona's goalkeeper for the next 10-15 years.'

It was clear.

It was a matter of time.

I made him see that this competition was the one that was making him better.

And he agreed to continue. ”A year later Manchester City appeared.

“And Barcelona - Unzué intervenes - made one of their best sporting decisions.

City wanted one of our two goalkeepers, perhaps more to Ter Stegen, but Barcelona said 'no'.

Who would sell would be Bravo.

It was the reaffirmation that Marc was waiting for. Perhaps if he had taken over the starting position from day one, he would have been much happier.

Despite being very young, he seemed older.

Very tidy.

With enormous common sense.

Eager to evolve.

But it was that competition that made him reach his highest level. ”From then on, Ter Stegen, who a few months after his arrival already spoke perfect Spanish and who also worked hard with Catalan, was able to focus even more on perfecting a I play with hardly any cracks. He does not notice the name of the rivals, but he does try to study together with De la Fuente the offensive mechanisms of footballers.

There is also a video job behind. When he returns home, however, the doorman goes alienated.

He does not consume football.

Does not like.

It moves away.

Nor does he pay attention to what the sports press publishes.

He lives match days like an ascetic.

He turns away from the cell phone.

And he concentrates on his homework.

Unzué has it clear: "Perfectionism drives you to work."

And then home.

To your life.

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