Manuel Pellegrini: "I try to be apolitical. Football unites, the fan next door doesn't matter if he is communist, right-wing, republican..."

The giant blue eyes of

(Santiago, Chile, 1953) receive EL MUNDO at the

, a few meters from

, where the Chilean has once again made

great .

Gone are his beginnings in his country, the title with

in Argentina,

, the Champions League semifinals with

, the brief stint with

, the continental quarterfinals with

,

, the exotic

or

.

on the benches condensed into a talk before receiving Madrid tonight.

35 years as a coach, half a life.

Do you remember life without football? I dropped out of school very young, at 17, and I always said that I wanted to be a professional footballer.

I combined my Engineering studies with being a footballer, I graduated as a Civil Engineer at 23 and played from 19 to 33. I don't remember life without football, as a child I liked to play and at 14 or 15 it was clear to me that it was going to be soccer player.

I spent a lot of time on it.

I wanted to study medicine at the University of Chile, because I was also a fan of the 'U' since I was a child, but for various reasons I did not enter Medicine and ended up doing Engineering at the Catholic University.

He played in the 'U' and studied at the Catholic.

They wanted to kill me on both sides.

The coach thing was not so clear to me. That was different.

I wanted to finish my career as a footballer and dedicate myself to my company, which was a small construction company.

I built houses, bought land... Everything so that I could dedicate myself to that when football ended.

But I met Fernando Riera, a prestigious technician, and he encouraged me.

Until 94 I did both, but then I was just a coach. Ancelotti says that you don't have to look at the footballers' ID.

Neither the coaches? No, I don't think anyone's, neither players, nor coaches nor people.

I have always defended that there are two ages, the chronological age, since you are born, and the biological one, the one you demand from yourself and the one you want.

It is a permanent fight against old age and you are going to slow it down if you take care of yourself, if you want to continue learning... What do you ask of retirement? Nothing.

Once the soccer is over, I will leave the activity.

But I think that in parallel with football I have always had personal learning and cultural demands, something that my parents instilled in me from a very young age.

So when football ends, which I don't know when it will be because I don't have a deadline, it will be like that.

The important thing is the day-to-day demand, what you want to learn and what you want to mentalize.

From what or who does a person learn from his experience?

From the training sessions, the matches, the players, the mistakes, the successes, the opinions... Learning in life is permanent.

You don't have to put labels on.

At 69 years old, one is fully in force, directing a soccer team entails a lot of pressure, but the president of the United States (Joe Biden) is 80, I would say that it is more difficult (laughs).

The professional requirement is unrelated to how old one is.

What do people say to you on the street? The truth is that I have been to 6 different countries and I have been outside Chile for 24 years, and I think that here in Andalusia, at Málaga and Betis, they have been the two clubs that... Well, I don't like to compare because in the 4 in Spain, also in Villarreal and Madrid, I was well received.

But at Málaga and Betis, the team made an important leap and the people are more passionate.

It is a luxury to run this club.

Gogo LobatoWORLD

What has Pellegrini given Betis? I have tried to instill my own personal demand.

I am very critical of myself, very demanding, and I have tried to transfer that to the group and I think that the group has made an effort to understand it.

We have achieved that same competitiveness that I have against myself in all areas of life.

I have been in Chile for 10 years and 24 abroad.

I have never stopped.

And it is a source of pride to have achieved success with what one believes is the correct path, based on the demand, the preparation, the learning... The player has to see that there is a highly prepared person in front of him. When does Pellegrini come home after a defeat? The first 24 hours are difficult... (laughs).

But since they already know me at the club and at home, they know how to soften the effects.

When 24 hours pass, you have to know how to digest it,

Do analysis and self-criticism. Has having done Engineering had anything to do with that very self-critical way of working? I think it has had a lot of influence on my life, in general.

Engineering requires mental order to solve problems in a logical way and that has helped me in my career.

But before I was an engineer, and after, I was part of a family.

I think my parents had a big influence in that regard.

My father was very demanding with himself, he did not go to school or the University, he studied on his own, with books, he was a civil builder and he set up a company only with his personal studies.

And I always remember my mother reading, she spoke English, French... She instilled the same in us.

Reading is very important to me, someone who reads is always learning.

My personal demand to be better comes from that, which is why I have learned many languages ​​and I read constantly.

For example, reading about human beings has helped me a lot in my career, because not everyone is like you.

Maybe at the beginning of my career I wanted to transmit my personality and for everyone to see something like me, and no, we are different.

You have to know the personalities, bring them together and form a competitive human group. When did you change the way you lead? I became self-critical when I ended up in Chile.

They were 10 years that weren't bad, but they weren't brilliant either.

I started my coaching career with a relegation to Universidad de Chile, a bankrupt club, I was young, I absorbed it and it was a decisive event for my success afterward.

From failure one learns a lot.

Later, in Ecuador, in a period of great solitude,

Since my career has always been very lonely, although luckily it has not had a family cost, I complemented my knowledge of soccer by understanding that part of the personality.

I was missing that.

How building a group is 70% of the success of a team. There is a lot of debate about the style.

You are a coach with a very specific stamp.

What is playing football well? I think the most important thing is to win.

If you don't win, you did something wrong.

Then there are ways and ways to win.

And on top of that, the clubs have to have a board that knows what they want their team to play, and the coaches have to choose a way of playing.

They are all valid and titles have been won with all of them, but I do believe that behind football is the show.

There are 60,000 people in a stadium, millions of people watching on television...

You have to give people a show.

That way of winning is very important to me, football is the most popular activity in the world and it has to be a show.

How to win is very important. Has it always been easy for you to implement your stamp in the teams you have led? Always.

In Madrid and Manchester too, they took me because of my idea.

There have been good and bad moments but I have never outlined a different game idea.

Where I put it into practice the most was in Malaga.

I took the team downhill, we kept the idea and we got to where we got to.

With the exception of West Ham, my teams have always been in Europe.

Has it always been easy for you to implement your brand in the teams you have managed? Always.

In Madrid and Manchester too, they took me because of my idea.

There have been good and bad moments but I have never outlined a different game idea.

Where I put it into practice the most was in Malaga.

I took the team downhill, we kept the idea and we got to where we got to.

With the exception of West Ham, my teams have always been in Europe.

Has it always been easy for you to implement your brand in the teams you have led? Always.

In Madrid and Manchester too, they took me because of my idea.

There have been good and bad moments but I have never outlined a different game idea.

Where I put it into practice the most was in Malaga.

I took the team downhill, we kept the idea and we got to where we got to.

With the exception of West Ham, my teams have always been in Europe.

Gogo LobatoWORLD

13 years have passed since his departure from Madrid.

What does the passage of time tell you about your season at the Bernabéu? Very few have the chance to lead Real Madrid.

It is a pride to direct an institution of that category.

If I ask myself about my work there... It can be bad, I have no problem admitting it.

We had a very good league, with 96 points, 105 goals and the team playing well, but we went out in the Cup and Champions League.

There were a series of mistakes that I made, and then unfortunately a lack of communication between the president and me, or a 'miscommunication' from the beginning due to different personal opinions.

I don't have any problem with Florentino Pérez, but when the president and the coach have different ideas, the coach has to leave.

And I knew very soon that I was not going to continue in Madrid.

Maybe he should have looked for another way to have another communication, but it's past, I loved managing Madrid, I would have liked to manage it for a couple of more years and have won titles, which is a requirement and is part of his DNA.

It was not possible, but Málaga came to me, and Málaga has been something indelible in my life. Did that experience affect you later when it came to managing the relationship with the players and the managers? No, no.

It is not a sin to think differently.

At Real Madrid they believe that a coach has to direct the type of players they give him and he has to dedicate himself to that, and I believe that the coach has to have an opinion on the squad that he is going to manage.

But he is already.

In the rest of the clubs I have always had quite an 'arrival' in that aspect, consistent with the sports director,

with the owners... I haven't had any problems. What do you think of the 'Negreira case' and the investigations that are being carried out?

I don't think that because of the 'Negreira case' the good repute of all the arbitrators in Spain can be questioned, that would seem unfair to me.

But it is important to have a clear report on what happened so that the honesty of the activity, of football, of which the referees are a part, is not questioned.

Soccer must be protected and cared for. Is the human being corrupt by nature? The human being is complicated, I'm not saying it, history says it.

Due to corruption, slavery, racism, violence against women, pedophiles, wars... There are people who can do so much damage...

The human being has done a lot of damage and that damage must be controlled with justice.

But it continues to happen that politicians send 18 or 20-year-old boys to war for a material issue.

And there is a whole story of the unnecessary damage that human beings have done. How do you mix politics in a First Division dressing room? I try to be as apolitical as possible.

Soccer tries to unite.

When the national team plays, for example, the fan is behind and you don't know if the one next to you is a communist, a right-winger, a republican... It doesn't matter, they go after their team.

Football unites, and I think that in the locker room that union is not broken by politics.

The political part has been unimportant in my team, I haven't seen it, nor the racial one, I don't see racism in the locker room.

There is friendship, demands, fights... With all the egotistical footballers are,

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