The feeling was very close to despair.
There hadn’t been a single call for a year and a half. Not a single meeting with a single director of football.
Ultimately, it is the directors of football who recruit the coaches. But for them to recruit you, you first have to explain to them what your model is. Your philosophy. Basically, you have to connect.
For me, that hadn’t happened during the period after leaving Espanyol. At least not until April 2018, when there was an opportunity to talk with Miguel Ángel Gómez, the director of football at Valladolid. It was thanks to my agent, Antonio López, who I had only just started working with.
I’d had another agent before Antonio, but it was only after all that time that I realised what I really needed. Someone who was just starting out, but who was also well-known. Antonio had been the Atlético Madrid captain; he had played for Mallorca and also for Osasuna. He was a full Spanish international – and now he wanted to represent me.