That had something of an epiphany.
Or, at least, that's what
Fran González
thinks
, the legendary left boot of that dystopian 90s Superdepor who turned Spanish football upside down.
Fran, who never stopped playing pachangas like a blessed patient with the ball, was leaving his ankles with some of those teammates with whom he won a League, two King's Cups and three Spanish Super Cups.
Nico
(La Coruña, 2002) -although Fran, his father, prefers to call him Nicolás- watched everything that those old glories did from a corner. He was almost always sitting. But that day he began to imitate gestures, movements. Seeing him was a revelation for Fran. Who knows what the hell he saw, but he wasn't wrong. The blond boy who resisted playing football debuted last weekend with the first team of Barcelona. The plan is that he inherits the position of Busquets.
Although Nico, we said, was not born with a ball as a pillow, even though his father was still active when he was born. The
Montañeros
, a modest club from A Coruña that during a good stage stood up to Deportivo in the lower categories, was going to be where he learned. But Nico, after a couple of weeks training, said he was not going back there. A year went by without playing. As a pre-teen that he was, what he played then was to play in a closed pavilion, and not in an open-air field. It was all he asked for.
The season ended, and Fran tried to find a way for a second chance. Again in the Montañeros. And he reached a pact with those responsible. Nico wouldn't have to step on the pavilion like other kids his age. I could play the field. But with a tricky condition: climb a couple of categories and play with children two or even three years older than him. So it was. And so he got hooked on a train that no longer stopped.
Then came another decisive moment: the alevín tournament that takes place in
Vilagarcía de Arousa
, a showcase where talent recruiters share the possible stars of the future. The Montañeros, whom few expected at that summer party in 2012 that brought together the best clubs in Spain along with others from the continent, coincided in his group with
Real Madrid
,
Porto
and, yes, with
Barcelona
. Nico stood out like few others. And he scored two goals for the Catalans, a prelude to what would come.
The press put the spotlight.
Real Madrid bet big.
So did Barcelona.
And the Deportivo?
The logic was not such in this case.
Depor's interest in Nico was behind the other offers.
Although Fran wanted to listen to what they proposed, he ended up weighing more the past, the problems that the former footballer had had with the eternal president,
Augusto César Lendoiro
.
Fran.
During those conversations, which did not end at all well, he requested that his son could be supported by some of those who had been his companions in the Montañeros, hired by Dépor.
He didn't like the answer, and that's where it all ended.
The priority of his mother for Barça
Fran, who is now head of the sports quarry, who during his career and despite the opportunities he had never left La Coruña, was going to take the step this time. But in another way. Fran's priority option for her son was not Barcelona. But there the opinion of
Gema
, his wife, and that of Nico himself, haunted by the mythomania of the great Barça of the
Xavi
,
Iniesta
or
Messi,
weighed more
. Together with his other two daughters,
Macarena
and
Carlota
, the family left everything to go live in Sant Cugat. Nico was 11 years old.
Emotional adjustment was never a problem. In fact, things were going so well for him in his studies that when he was offered to take
first and second year of ESO at the same time
, he did not hesitate. He took both courses in one year and with a grade. After passing the Selectividad, he began Business Administration and Management at UCAM in Murcia. Although a year ago he decided to take time to focus on a dream as a Barça player that, for some time, was questioned.
In Barcelona, after several tests, they predicted that the child would end up around 1.90 in height (they were not wrong, he is now 1.88). So the sports management understood that despite his ability, ability to pass and dribble, and in addition to finishing, he should be hardened as a midfielder. And that Fran, due to its technical characteristics, preferred to see it more advanced. For four years he had a total education like six.
At 15 years old, he grew more than 20 centimeters and gained 20 kilos in weight
. His body became uncoordinated and in the lower categories of Barcelona they came to doubt due to the growing concern of Fran, who saw how his son was not a decided bet of the club. While the future was chiseled from promises like
Ansu Fati
or the now separated
Ilaix Moriba
, Nico was always in the background.
Even when Fran spent two years with City working for the U-18 team, he had the option of taking his son with him to
Manchester
. But Nico, stubborn, didn't want to. His father always thought that all the obstacles he was dealing with in La Masia made him stronger. A year ago, in fact, I was doing the preseason with the Junior in the Honor Division. Fran, demanding and consistent in his role as father, was scared. But it also showed that the worse things painted him, the more he performed. He resisted. Nico ended up carrying the handle of a subsidiary in which he came out one afternoon playing right back.
Koeman
caught his eye. And he was convinced that he would need his game, one and two touches. And his physique, robust and contradictory to his grace with dribbling.
Fran has been asked her whole life if her son looks like him.
The first impression of the viewer offers a resounding negative.
Because Nico is right-handed and he is left-handed, because of his physique, because of his position ... But Fran's mirror, the one that counts, insists on giving him the same image of his times of greatness, the same impudence, the same feeling of doing what that he comes to win with the ball.
With that parsimonious and Galician expression that nothing happens.
But everything passes.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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