He was like, “Who are these people?” Hahaha. In the end they even turned up at the training ground to ask Luis for an explanation. I couldn’t believe it! This was the first team! Who cared about school? But they could not get their heads around how I could just skip classes.Īfter a couple of training sessions with the first team, they really began to protest. They are very humble and hardworking - typical people from Ondarroa. When they offered to change them for a smaller pair, I said, “No! I want these!”Īnd then I went to training with gloves that went up to my elbows.Īnyway, when I told my parents that I was going to train with the first team, they were worried. The pair they bought were way too large, but I had already fallen in love. We would walk past this sports shop near our home, and every time we passed it I would say, “I want the gloves, I want the glooooves!” In the end they gave in. I mean, they were the ones who had bought me my first pair of gloves when I was a kid. I thought they would be happy for me, and they were - to an extent. I was so overjoyed and I couldn’t keep it to myself. In fact, I often feel that people know who we are, but that hardly anybody knows us. But that type of familiarity is very superficial. We are well-known in the sense that people watch us play every week, and they are familiar with our strengths and weaknesses. For better or worse, I have always been like that.īut even if it costs me to do it, I want to share some of these moments with you, because I think it's time for us to get to know each other better.įootballers are always in the public eye. But I am from Ondarroa, a fishing village on the north coast, and there we rarely share our feelings. I know that the cliché is that Spaniards are sociable and open, and in many parts of Spain it is like that. They are personal stories that I have shared with practically no one. While lifting the trophy I remembered many of the moments - happy and not so happy - that had brought me there. It was an incredible feeling, and a really hard one to explain.
Third, it shows how much the title means to me personally. There’s no better feeling in football than to win as a team. This is a big reason why that victory meant so much to me and why I feel so at home at Chelsea. The coaching team deserves huge recognition for making every one of us feel important. We had started the season badly, but then we had ended it in the best way imaginable. First, it shows what the Champions League title means to us players. I was lifting the trophy, screaming out of sheer happiness, with my teammates celebrating behind me.
On 29 May, after we had beaten Manchester City in the Champions League final, somebody took a picture of me that was worth way more - probably an entire book, at least to me. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words.
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