Thanks for everything, damn coach.

It is said that the job of the journalist is to tell that

has died to a reader who did not know he was alive.

In this tribute to

, the man who gave several of us (barely twenty-somethings looking for their place in the world) the option to enjoy, to suffer, to laugh and cry, to ultimately develop our personality for years in a privileged professional environment, please do not look for a journalistic text.

What they will get next, from the greatest possible thanks, will be run over thoughts that are difficult to contrast with reality.

Or at least with other realities.

"May your story, big or small, always be worth remembering"

This is the story that I want to remember about

coach

, a person as intellectually capable as he is emotionally complex.

A cult character like few others.

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CBA 2022 - 2023.

Miguel Ángel Martín, the 'Cura', former coach of Estudiantes and Real Madrid, dies

• Drafting: LUCAS SÁEZ-BRAVOMadrid

Miguel Ángel Martín, the 'Cura', former coach of Estudiantes and Real Madrid, dies

When we began to inform, in close circles, of his death, practically none of our interlocutors had the slightest idea of ​​where 'Cura' Martín was.

Miguel Ángel was a happy grandfather in recent years, who, due to an unfortunate and denounceable medical error, years of life have been taken from him.

He was also a former coach without excessive desire to reminisce about past times, or perhaps wanting to do so without being able to convey it in the most appropriate way.

Miguel Ángel was finally a happy husband, and an illustrious retiree.

And this last qualifier, illustrious, is perhaps the most accurate of all those that could be chosen.

Hence the essential work of the athlete today disguised as a journalist.

Disciple of Ignacio Pinedo

We were ending the 80's, and the Students Club needed a new impetus.

's years in charge

of the first team (as it was called then) were no longer enough.

From little Magariños he was going to play the games in the gigantic Palacio de los Deportes.

The immense trio

was losing some gasoline due to Vicente's years and David's injuries.

And not many years before, Miguel Ángel had landed through the quarry, a single man over 30 years old (a fact full of prejudices in these times), with an important executive position in the Kodak company, but at the same time a great admirer. and self-proclaimed disciple of

, which prevented him from making the only logical decision about his relationship with basketball;

leave it.

Being in contact with Pinedo was an obvious symptom of an addiction that, in the case of Miguel Ángel, took place without the apparent need to lead a professional team.

With the management of the quarry in the afternoons, and training the Junior team at night, with no family waiting at home, the dose of drugs seemed adequate.

How then to mess with an intelligent person, and change his peaceful life forever?

The Estudiantes had it very clear.

If Garrido could no longer continue, why bother with selection processes;

the ladder ran, period.

And what happened from that moment on was the story of a poetic nonsense, which marked the life of 'El Cura' and that of many of us forever.

Miguel Ángel had to take the reins of the first team in the middle of the season and with a squad very made to the commandments of Paco Garrido, the first of which was non-negotiable: "two never fight if one doesn't want to".

For guys like Vicente Gil or John Pinone, that was a golden cage.

But it was still a cage.

As long as the objectives were met, there was no reason to destroy the bars.

Miguel Ángel was already called with a broken cage, but a disciple of Pinedo can handle everything, or so the multinational executive who became, in a little measured way, the head of capricious athletes believed.

His dressage strategy also had non-negotiable points.

"If I have to go from managing people to taming animals, I'll tame the ones I want."

And Michelangelo's favorite animals, given his recent homegrown past, were clearly the 'JASP basketball players' of the time.

That intuition about the talent that Miguel Ángel possessed, and that surly, hard and bossy character, had the effect of an almost immediate reconversion of the project.

It has always been said that only those who take risks win;

I don't think the priest agreed with that, because he was more of an

as a top-level coach.

He was simply an extraordinary talent spotter with a solid intellectual foundation.

Someone with a special intuition to compose teams.

Much more than to train them later, by the way.

Or maybe, as his detractors might agree, he was just a lucky guy.

Azofra, Blacksmiths...

Here we cling today more than ever to the first option.

It seemed absolutely logical to Miguel Ángel to replace a point guard, who, in one of his last puffs, could set a locker room on fire (Vicente Gil), with a kid in perfect physical and basketball magazine condition, nice to boredom and capable of setting fire to at that time the basketball court with its genius profile (

).

And it goes without saying that he has the tiny risks assumed in the staging of

.

A competition animal.

The necessary 'albertosinmiedo' in that strange and striking student posh-progre ecosystem, so orphaned by neighborhood types without complexes.

Demonstrating these two success stories for the revolution, and with Pinone at the helm of competitive basketball for a lifetime (head and focus, head and more focus...), Miguel Ángel el Breve, as the club's manager,

, he went from neighborhood priest to Bishop with well-deserved papal airs.

What ended up happening, for not much more than five years in command of the Estudiantes first team, was the opportunity to take off to infinity and beyond.

That Russian roulette bet by the student management transformed a good (good) neighborhood club with great and well-earned appreciation from critics and the public, into the best Sports Limited Company of its sport in Spain together with Juventud de Badalona.

With both projects full of arguments to occupy the central pages of their environments, and to elicit praise by land, sea and air.

That transformation, in Spanish basketball at the beginning of the 90s, meant being very close to a lot of money in sponsorships, a lot of media attention, titles on and off the track;

to be very close to an unbeatable present and, above all, to an exciting future.

With the tension and stress of the day, it is very likely that Michelangelo was not fully aware of that author's work, of the conversion of a good project into a design that marked so many people so much.

That Estudiantes designed exclusively in the head of El Cura, exceeded any expectation of the most optimistic.

This own design is described in an evident and of course partial way (if they had made me an object it would be objective, said the wise man), with an external signing, in addition to the already mentioned commitment to the young talent of the house.

It is with the signing of

, Miguel Ángel's commitment, with which he clearly completes the very

way of understanding what professional basketball could be for a disciple of Pinedo.

Juan was a top-level kid in his junior age, from the Madrid youth academy, which of course offered a credit, with the ease of crossing sidewalks to specify his file, but without the talent on the field of Alberto or Nacho, and without the obligation to offer him a first contract, as there seemed to be with house players such as

, three pieces of the internal student lego, which the rules of the game at that time placed on the board without possible alternative.

Faced with the signing of Juan, many possible alternatives could be considered.

And most likely Miguel Angel did not consider any.

And, without concrete evidence, we ventured to proclaim that the boy's characteristics would somehow appear in the designer's head that would not only have to do with his improvable outside shot, or with his striking and very long arms or his powerful legs capable of bother the rival forwards a lot when defending.

Without evidence to support it, we insist, we imagine the intuitive head of human resources asking himself -and asking- questions much more related to the intellectuality of the profile than to his passing technique;

with the specific role within a high-level business department, than with their points, assists or rebounds per game played.

In short, we imagine Miguel Ángel noting down years before in his logbooks the adventurous professional characteristics of a cadet of the Spanish team in which they had coincided.

"Aisa's head is a healthy muscle but it needs action..."

There is no evidence of any of this, logically.

Just a fabled, partial and minimally consistent reading of a fellow-worker.

But they say that facts -more or less fabled- are always real in their consequences.

And the consequence of that succession of events led by Miguel Ángel can be summed up in a specific situation that this hasty editor, and grateful fifty-year-old, wants to leave as a personal tribute and climax to the person who gave him the opportunity to live a high-performance experience that he will never be able to forget.

Something that, in the few times we later met, it never occurred to me to share explicitly with him, perhaps due to a mixture of modesty and lack of intelligence, or perhaps because... what do I know...

In a moment of absolute fulfillment, two twenty-somethings closed the door of a hotel room in Granada behind them, trying to assimilate the experience that an absolute leading role could leave them the next day in an unexpected Copa del Rey Basketball Final.

- "Why are we so good, Pablo, damn it?!!"

(It was the cry of my best friend in the world of sports, of my roommate in many of those privileged adventures, of the most intelligent person with whom I never dreamed of relating if it was about getting logical answers).

- "What the hell are you telling me, Juan!! You tell me..."

Why did we look so good playing basketball with you, Miguel Ángel?

Neither Juan Aisa nor I knew it then.

We didn't need it.

But I think you would have liked very much to have witnessed that moment.

Because the answer, most likely, was in your unapproachable personality as a leader;

in your privileged and highly complex director's head.

Rest in peace, in the Azteca stadium, Miguel Ángel.

Know that I will never stop trying to answer Juan's question.

I promise you that humble and awkward thank you for your trust in us, you fucking coach.

My most heartfelt hug to his widow, Marisol, his children, and to his entire family.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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