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Sid Lowe, Spain writer
César Robledo has work to do, but wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a bit before seven o’clock on Saturday evening and the big yellow bus he drives has just rolled into the Vall d’en Bas hotel in the Catalan countryside. His passengers, footballers for Union Deportiva Las Palmas, have got off, leaving him to clear up. The picnics, individually prepared in paper bags with squad numbers penciled on, have been polished off. A few beers have been too: Pio Pio, the club’s own brew.
“I prefer to arrive and spend an hour, even two, tidying than go to my room,” Robledo says. “Because that means they’ve won, and they’re happy.”
Happy? They’re delighted, a party breaking out on board and rightly so: the passengers have just become the first team this season to beat Barcelona away, winning 2-1 at Montjuic. Vicente Gomez, the Las Palmas-born former midfielder who now works in the sporting directorate, is waiting for the players.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he tells them. What they’ve done is make history. This is their first win at Barcelona in 53 years. Bottom two months ago, it’s also their fourth win in six. They’ve come a long way.
Quite literally.
It is 1,350 miles from Las Palmas to Barcelona. The capital of Gran Canaria, an Atlantic island off Western Sahara, it is different to the rest of Spain: different climate, different character, different time zone. On the penultimate session before its football team fly off to face the league leaders on the mainland, it is over 30 degrees, a kalima mist of desert sand giving an orangey haze to the light. Standing pitchside at Barranco Seco, Luis Helguera, the sporting director, smiles. “This is the good part,” he says.
The not so good part awaits. Inside, staff are already doing battle with it. History is made by many men and women, a truly collective effort.
Imagine Liverpool playing in Athens or Moscow. That’s pretty much what Las Palmas have to do every other week, impacting everything: “your preparation, training hours, the intensity of work, recovery, your mood,” says Diego Martinez, the coach who took over in October. “But we never highlight the negative; if you do, you feel even more tired.”
“Before we join a club, we always carry out an analysis,” says fitness coach Victor Lafuente. “One of the conclusions we reached was precisely this: that the travel, and the type of travel, conditions the way you work.”
“Does it ever,” adds Ivan Bennasar, the recovery specialist.
Together they have built a protocol, micro-stimuli inserted as a priority throughout a schedule that’s squeezed tight, where there are many “disruptors.” It takes in everything from biorhythms and metabolism to the central nervous system, cortisol levels, shifts in temperature and time itself. Travel is conceived of as a “pseudo training session,” another stress factor impacting players’ performances and well-being.
“You plan everything to the millimetre,” Bennasar says.
Ruben Fontes knows. Las Palmas’ delegate, the travel is his responsibility, and it is some responsibility, balancing footballing and financial needs, human needs, too. It is also some challenge: moving a football team is a mammoth operation and as he sits sketching out details, there are arrows and lists and numbers everywhere.
The mainland is three hours away. Charter planes fly from a base in Valencia, charge by the hour and can cost €50,000 per game, at least 19 times a year. A regular flight costs more like €7,000. So while players’ condition is key, the conclusion is clear.
“We do fly charters sometimes,” Fontes says. How many in a season? “As few as possible!” More often, there are a lot of tickets to buy, which isn’t easy either, especially when the league fixes dates late, offices close early and fans book the same flights.
Fontes goes through the list. Twenty-three players, a third goalkeeper — always taken in case, the doctor, two physios, sporting director, director of communications, club media, technical staff, nutritionist, director of security, president, vice-president, directors … “And I always buy a few spares,” he says. “Fifty seats, basically.” Then there’s the luggage: 750 kilos of it, all in.
Once everything’s done, a document is sent to a WhatsApp group where only Fontes posts or it would be chaos: departures, arrivals, transfers, meetings, meals. “Don’t forget your passport,” it says. The flight for Barcelona — VY3007 with Vueling — leaves at 3:45 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 29. The return is after the game: flight VY3006. Las Palmas depart El Prat at 8:55 p.m., land in Gran Canaria at 11:20 p.m. and get back to Barranco Seco at 11:45 p.m., heading home from there.
Only they don’t.
Two days before flying, the Copa del Rey draw changes everything. Las Palmas are pitched against tiny, Barcelona-based Europa on astroturf and on Tuesday at 9:15 p.m. No point returning to the island between games, they won’t be home on Saturday at all; instead, they’ll play two games and finally reach Barranco Seco at 4 a.m. on Wednesday. “My missus is raging!” striker Oliver McBurnie says, cracking up. “I was looking after the baby on Sunday.”
Well, the document did say in red capital letters: ALL TIMES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Besides, Fontes thinks that Father Christmas has come. The draw could have been much worse. Playing in Barcelona helps. And preparing a Plan B, C or D against the clock is what he does best.
Extending the stay means extending everything else; it means more flights, more hotel rooms, more everything. More cost too: the flight home will now be a charter, taking off from El Prat at 12:45 a.m. Pray there’s no extra time. It also means finding somewhere to train. Espanyol and Barcelona, like most teams, will help but actually having a pitch available at a good time is a different matter. The solution is is found 68 miles north of Barcelona: Vall d’en Bas is a hotel with sports facilities.
Thursday at Barranco Seco, a day until departure, and Fontes is on the phone. “Affirmative: all in yellow, goalkeepers in green.”
Down in the laundry where poor Pio Pio, the club’s giant canary mascot, has lost his head, Melania fills a bag: four days’ of training kit for each player, in neat, individualised rolls, tied and tagged. Two complete sets of match kits too: three shirts per player per game, plus spares.
Oscar is the kitman and just about everything else, too. He packs metal cases and giant bags with everything, even spare iron-on numbers and letters. Thirty balls for the league game and 30 more for the cup go in, deflated to get on board. Oscar heads to the kitchen, where Sergio prepares lunch, and piles more crates high with coffee, milk, bread, even a portable grill.
Then there’s this big responsibility he says, pulling out the team’s PlayStation. “I don’t weigh the cases; I just know now. And if one is over 25 kilos, I switch stuff around.”
Next it’s up to the second floor where doctor Diosdado Bolanos, “Doki,” is packing everything. “I can’t be out in a city looking for a pharmacy,” he says.
Outside, Las Palmas’s players are working on a plan.
After 10 p.m., Fontes sends the final, revised travel itinerary. If you want your cases checked in, leave them by the stairs before training tomorrow. Temperature in Barcelona: 50 degrees. Don’t forget your passport.
“The processes and protocols are never standard; it’s always made to measure,” Diego Martinez says. “It’s a long journey with specific logistics. And this week is different. We have to find good rest, good sessions, time to unite the group. I want to thank everyone, all the staff. The management of this situation from everyone has been very, very good and with very little time. It’s not easy.”
It’s Friday morning back at Barranco Seco, and the coach has arrived early with Larry Alvarez, the director of communications and protocol, for the pre-match news conference. He praises the management of travel plans that are still new to him six weeks into this job and explains what his team intends to do the following day. Alvarez, meanwhile, is busy sorting directors’ travel: the president will be going early to join Barcelona’s 125th birthday celebrations with the club ambassador, Daniel Carnevali.
The crates are done; the players arrive, their cases left. Oscar loads the van with Jose and Fran, heading to the airport to check in. Ruben confirms tickets and room lists. Players share. Those who want singles pay a supplement.
Training finishes. It is 24 hours before kickoff.
Lunch ends. “The guagua is outside,” someone says. Everyone in the Canary Islands calls buses guaguas, which is said “wawa.” It drops them at the airport at 2:53 p.m. for a 3:15 p.m. boarding. Oscar is there waiting with a kit bag: they fill it with their wash-bags so he can take it to the desk, one last item to check in. Fontes hands out boarding passes. “No one wants B or D,” he laughs, outraged complaints a running joke. Someone has to be squeezed into the middle seats.
A WhatsApp arrives with the gate information.
There’s barely time for a takeaway coffee, the flight already boarding when they’re through security. Which might not be a bad thing: too much time at the airport might mean “wandering about aimlessly, ambling into McDonalds,” Fontes laughs. He stands at Gate C1 counting them on. Last season, 15 players and two physios missed a charter to Seville. It can happen. “No, it can’t,” he says.
The captain, Kirian Rodríguez, passes the front row as he boards. “Nah,” he smiles. “The experience is back there.” Back there, a game of cards starts across the aisle. Mostly though, they withdraw into iPads, quiet conversation or sleep. The plane is full and it’s not just their space, which in truth inhibits. When it’s a charter, Bennasar and Lafuente get them up, moving around, but a commercial flight is different so instead, there’s “normalisation,” a stretching session, when they land. Many wear compression socks.
In the front row, Fontes, Alvarez and Helguera sit together, Alvarez handing out Smarties. In the third row, Martinez revises the match plan. “I might sleep for 20 minutes but usually I can’t,” he says. Instead, he reads. Mario Alonso Puig’s “El Camino del Despertar.” And: “El método Fábrika.”
When Las Palmas land in Barcelona, the guagua is waiting outside the Terminal.
Hang on … the guagua? How did it get there?
The answer, of course, is: it didn’t. Las Palmas have two buses: one on the island, driven by Vicente; another on the mainland, driven by César Robledo. They look the same outside, but that one is basic inside while this is LaLiga’s best because it has to be. A year old, worth €600,000, it is based in Gijon, northern Spain, although today Robledo has come from a depot in Logrono.
An encyclopedia of rest stops and roadsides, most of his miles are covered alone, an iPod Classic plugged in. Once he picks up the team, Manolo, the director of security, sits alongside him. “The navigator,” Robledo says; “more like the guy telling him to slow down,” Manolo says. Midfielder Alberto Moleiro likes to sit down in the front sometimes, too.
Loaded up at last, the bus reaches the Grand Marina hotel at 9:05 p.m. Straight to dinner on the eighth floor and then one last sleep.
Match day morning and Doki is first in as always with Cinthya, the physio, distributing supplements and pills before breakfast, neatly laid out in little plastic packets. There’s one long table for players and two small, circular ones for staff, but they’re not full. It’s an early kickoff and there’s brunch at 10:45 a.m., so few come at 9.30 a.m.
There’s activation on the second floor at 10:30 a.m. and a team meeting at 11:40 a.m. in the Barcino room, final instructions on beating Barcelona. Then it’s downstairs for noon. A dozen fans wait, some with gifts. Police outriders rev and Robledo pulls out at 12:20 p.m., up the hill to Montjuic. Two mini busses follow. It takes 10 minutes. Kickoff is at 2 p.m.
At 4:03 p.m., history is made.
The journey’s not over, but on days like this it all feels worth it. The guagua waits outside the Olympic stadium, beers on board.