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Interview
4 November 2018 2.00 h

Rubí

Espanyol's head coach

“Leaders? I see a team capable of anything“

Espanyol changed their head coach this summer, replacing Quique Sánchez Flores with up and coming coach Rubi. L’Esportiu caught up with him to chat about the club’s impressive start to the season

“This group of players and the people around them, sports and technical coaches, won’t get carried away”
“What I want, in the normal flow of things, is to maintain this level of play that we’re seeing now”

Joan Francesc Fer­rer (Vi­las­sar de Mar, 1970) – known in foot­balling cir­cles as Rubi – is a well-trav­elled coach and at Es­panyol he now has his re­ward for so many years of work and ded­i­ca­tion. His team is play­ing prodi­gious foot­ball and get­ting re­sults, and that?s got a lot to do with this coach, who car­ries a cer­tain air of the eter­nal teenager due to his youth­ful ap­pear­ance. Dur­ing the in­ter­view he is calm, happy and smiles in­ces­santly, like a kid with a new toy.

The in­ter­na­tional break came at a good time after the vic­tory against Vil­lar­real.
It was our best game so far and we’re in bet­ter shape than at the pre­vi­ous break, when we lost against Alavés and pretty much gave the game away. Now it’s time to enjoy it and work to make it con­tinue. We want more.
Do you think praise makes peo­ple weaker?
This group of play­ers and the peo­ple around them, sports and tech­ni­cal coaches, won’t get car­ried away. When things go well our duty as coaches is to stay alert and the de­mands are even greater now. We’ve been able to per­form at a high level... we must now con­tinue and can’t lose that. When things aren’t going your way, maybe that’s when you’re a bit more tol­er­ant be­cause oth­er­wise you can harm a player men­tally. Now we have to be on top of it be­cause our aim is to enjoy more days like these.
Did you imag­ine as good a start to the sea­son as this?
I vi­su­alised what I wanted from my team but you can’t do it with re­sults. You can’t be think­ing you’ll get points here but not there. That never hap­pens. But as an idea, yes. In pre-sea­son I saw a group of play­ers who were eager to make up for last sea­son. I hoped the team would begin like this. It’s the idea of a team we wanted. With the teams I’ve had from the start it’s al­ways gone well: Girona, Val­ladolid, Huesca last year and I be­lieved this year too.
Quique said that this team was “emo­tion­ally soft?” Did you find a team with lit­tle con­fi­dence and low self es­teem?
I found a team that is eager to work and will­ing to learn and who make de­mands of them­selves. It’s also true that we have very good play­ers but also great peo­ple in human terms, and I’ve been in plenty of dress­ing rooms. Per­haps that’s why at times this group can be af­fected a lot by good and pos­i­tive things, and vice versa. They’re peo­ple who care and who suf­fer for the club. When­ever a new player ar­rives, the human fac­tor stands out.
How does that make your work eas­ier?
As a coach it re­as­sures me a lot. I know that if things don’t go well I’ll have peo­ple who’ll give me a hand. So the de­mands have to be high. You have to put pres­sure on the play­ers be­cause if I didn’t it would be a mis­take. But when things are going well all dress­ing rooms are good, and maybe last year, when they didn’t go so well, hav­ing a squad like this helped a lot. That’s why when you have a team like this you have to be care­ful about who you bring in. Foot­ball aside, the human as­pect is very im­por­tant. Lardín was ques­tioned for re­new­ing Javi López and he com­mented that be­yond the qual­ity there was also the co­he­sion of the group. In foot­ball and more so in the first di­vi­sion there has to be a cer­tain level of qual­ity, fit­ness... In Javi’s case, he has a dif­fer­ent prob­lem: he cares about every­one. He has to worry about his own per­for­mance but, in ad­di­tion he wor­ries about his team­mates. This is also some­thing to be val­ued. And in the end we’re al­ways say­ing that we want home-grown peo­ple, com­mit­ted peo­ple, and all play­ers have bet­ter and worse mo­ments. But when you have these val­ues you have to take care of them. Then if he doesn’t play well, some­one else plays, but he gives you a player who is fully com­mit­ted to Es­panyol and leaves every­thing on the field. That is un­de­ni­able.
Is the chal­lenge now to pro­long this sweet mo­ment?
Many peo­ple tell you that you need to make the most of the mo­ment, the good streak. But I al­ways say the same thing: what does that mean? For me the mo­ment has to last all sea­son. Of course, maybe there are two or three games where you only get a point or you’re not at your best, we know that, but what I want, in the nor­mal flow of things, is to main­tain this level of play that we’re see­ing now. I don’t feel like we have to take the op­por­tu­nity to get points on the board and then stop doing that in a month. I want the idea to be clear in every match and will stay on top of play­ers to per­form at a very high level. That’s my mind­set. At home the team’s doing re­ally well but away we’re not get­ting the wins. It’s a shame, be­cause ex­cept for the Real Madrid game we’ve gone ahead in all the games and that’s the hard­est thing to do in a match. I’ve told the boys that in re­cent years they’ve shown they could win away games by scor­ing the odd goal and mak­ing it very dif­fi­cult for the op­po­nents to equalise. We’re now work­ing on this.
And what have the fans said to you?
I feel like we’re all very happy and have come here to make the fans happy and enjoy their team. This is the best re­ward. Now we have the duty to make it last all sea­son. I see Es­panyol fans happy even though when we ar­rived they were a bit down and neg­a­tive. We can change this, and help them be­lieve and value what they have, a beau­ti­ful sta­dium, a good squad and good play­ers, and that also trans­fers to the field. The fans are thrilled and more peo­ple are com­ing to the sta­dium for every game. This is pos­i­tive and hope­fully we’ll get a thou­sand more each game. The acoustics of the sta­dium are spec­tac­u­lar. The sta­dium is only half full and it feels like it’s full. Imag­ine what it’d be like with the sta­dium to­tally full with this feel­ing we’re gen­er­at­ing. It’s the chal­lenge we all have be­fore us: we must con­tinue to play good foot­ball and they must fill the sta­dium.

foot­ball in­ter­view

The importance of team spirit

Asked about his willingness to play the whole squad from the beginning of the season, Rubi says: “As a coach, I am continually analysing performances on a match by match basis. I’m not fixed on keeping the same line-up from one week to the next... That’s why how Víctor Sánchez, Piatti, Hernán, Duarte and Roberto are reacting now is so important, because if the situation changes, those who come in will need to do the same. But I think that will be easy because we are a close-knit group and you can see that by how goals are celebrated on the bench and on the pitch.”

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