EDUARDO COLOM Palma
Palm
Updated Friday, April 5, 2024-9:20 p.m.
Copa del Rey Kohlberg, American owner of Mallorca: "The football war in Spain seems like the 'far west'"
RCD Mallorca Javier Aguirre, the coach with eight Basque surnames and 850 games who never wanted to be a coach
On Mallorca
's path to the fourth
Copa del Rey
final
in its history, two milestones stand.
Two
milestones
, throws where the coin flew into the air and came up heads. One, the feet that the gigantic goalkeeper
Dominique Greif moved felinely on the line to save
Brais Méndez
's penalty
in San Sebastián. It was the injury time of the first half of the semi-final and before the precipice of what
psychological goals
entail . The other, the goal in extra time of the round of 16 in Tenerife scored by one of the big guys in the locker room: a
Canadian
guy with
pugilistic qualities
who arrived at the vermilion club a year ago after a brilliant emergence in
Valladolid,
with
eight goals
in 16 matches played.
Hours before the final and a few days after turning
29
,
Cyle Larin
(Ontario, 1995) speaks to EL MUNDO. Few words, he remembers that goal in Tenerife that the team celebrated like a man and that once again uncorked the island's enthusiasm for
Mallorca's
fetish competition
21 years after
it beat Recreativo de Huelva 0-3 in its last final .
Son of
a Canadian mother
and Jamaican father, Larin is part of the batch of soccer players that led the Maple Leaf national team to play its
second World Cup,
in
Qatar in 2022
. In a country where ice hockey is the national sport, he also put on skates: "I started with ice hockey, but it was
too expensive
for the family." His thing was football. He followed his Caribbean "roots." "
I always had a ball at my feet
, I played in the street with my friends, at school, always soccer...and I was good at it." He came to play as a goalkeeper, but as soon as he scored a goal, he changed his vocation.
This is how he came to the
MLS
and signed for
Orlando City
, where he got to play against his idol: the former Chelsea striker,
Didier Drogba,
who played for the
Montreal Impact
. From a distance, he says that Canada has good players to "play at the highest level" and that "
the infrastructure is improving
" but he admits it is not the same as in Europe, where children have "more facilities" for soccer.
His first jump to the old continent was to Turkey, where he joined
Besiktas,
a club where he remained for four seasons. As 'Águila negra' he managed to score 23 goals in 45 games as the best annual record: "It was all very different from what I knew, the culture, the passion, the noise of the fans...
it was a great experience
, we won trophies and I learned a lot".
Since landing at the Balearic club, where he has scored two goals in the League,
his best expectations have not been met.
So far, Larin has not had the success in Mallorca that he had in
Valladolid
, where he put together one of the best performances of a winter signing, leading the Pucelano club to
fight until the end
for a permanence that he ultimately could not achieve.
"We have all rowed hard together"
However, in the
Cup
they have achieved good records. With Kosovar
Vedat Muriqi
as untouchable at the spearhead of the attack, Larin has to serve as second striker in Javier Aguirre's most offensive variables. "I have been able to help with
important goals
in this Cup, but above all it has been
teamwork
, we have all rowed hard together to get here," explains the forward when asked about that goal. A
brilliant
dribble shot early, on the half turn on the edge of the small area that ended up hitting the post.
"
I have played, fundamentally, as a 9
, but in my career I have also been on the left and in the center. That's how I played for Besiktas, moving more, touching the ball and then
attacking the area
," he explains, opening the range of options with the one who hopes to find a place in a team that has a hard time scoring goals.
Furthermore, he understands that the Cup is almost a
religion
in Mallorca. The island that has not enjoyed a final for
21 years
and where he now lives happily with his wife and his two twin children, appreciating "the calm, the quality of life and good food."
"We know what this Copa del Rey means to everyone
," he says. "
We're going to go for it
, we trust each other," he closes.