He was having fun with his Sporting de Portugal teammates at a meal paid for by the fines. Then, his phone rang and Luis Frade (Río Tinto, Portugal; 25 years old) answered it without looking at the screen.
– “Hello, I’m Xavi Pascual,” they told him from the other side of the line.
– “Ah, hello Charly,” Frade responded, thinking it was his former partner Carlos Ruesga, still unable to discern whether an accent was Catalan or Asturian.
– “I’m Xavi Pascual,” they insisted on the other end of the phone.
– “Yes, yes, Charly, what’s wrong,” Frade continued in his mistake.
– “Xavi Pascual, the Barcelona coach…”, they clarified. And it was at that moment that the pivot realized his mistake. “I turned white, nervous, lost, and asked him to call me in a few minutes,” says Frade. He took a shower and picked up his cell phone again. “I don’t remember anything he told me other than that they loved me,” he admits. But his life, like when he was 12 years old, abruptly changed script again thanks to the handball.
It turns out that while he was still a child, his parents sent him to some summer camps to entertain himself. It happened much more than that because among the sports they did was handball. “Do you play normally?” a monitor asked him. “Well, you should think about it because you have the body for it,” he added in response to the refusal. The advice stayed in his brain and when he returned home, since he was no longer playing soccer and basketball and swimming were not enough for him, he decided to try Aguas Santas, which was next to Oporto and the house. of the. Although at that time he shared it with karate. “It is a discipline that I started when I was five years old and in which over the years I became a black belt,” this big-haired player, 1.94 meters tall and weighing around 110 kilos, proudly points out; “He transmitted many values to me and made me mature, he taught me to be a good person because it is not an art of hitting but of defending yourself. And I think he has helped me with handball in terms of agility, strength, speed of movement… “
The sports pairing, in any case, upset their parents. To Luis, who played rugby for Benfica; and Mónica who played basketball at Acadómico do Porto. And it was not unusual that after karate, with their father’s Ford Transit or their mother’s Peugeot 307, they would burn tires to arrive as late as possible for handball training. “They gave me everything and always supported me; the best parents possible,” she admits. Although they also made him study and he even went to the University of Economics of Porto (FEP), but he had to leave it with professionalism. “Maybe it will end one day because I liked it,” says Frade, while he remembers his mother, who died three years ago due to a damned cancer. “In part, I play for her,” resolves the Barça pivot.
His emergence with handball had no end, from Aguas Santas to Sporting Portugal, chosen twice as the best junior world pivot and once in Europe, also the best in the world under-20. Right after he arrived at Barça, post-pandemic. “From the first days I remember the exhaustion,” he clarifies; “In one year I went from playing with my friends in the league, to the next year with my idols and participating in two Final Fours. I understood the professionalism, the routines, how you had to take care of yourself…” And he gradually gained his place, even though he had Ludovic Fàbregas and Cedric Sorhaindo ahead of him. “That’s what makes you good, it makes you evolve,” he agrees; “And in the first three months I didn’t realize it, but then you start to gain positions, balls, and people look you in the eyes and make you feel like one of them. That motivates you and makes you proud.” The same, he says, as having now performed as the team’s main pivot, already in another Final Four, where they will fight against the German Kiel (Dazn and Sport3, 18.00). “They are a very good team and aspire to win the Champions League like us and like Madgeburg and Aalborg. We will risk our souls,” he reflects. He, a six-meter karateka, will also do it for his mother and for his son Gonçalo, who was born on June 1, the joy of the house in Castelldefels with his partner Caterina and Zeus, the Golden Retriever.
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