“You can ask whatever you want.” Pere Romeu (Barcelona, 30) is frank and transparent. One of the few Barcelona coaches with a complete lineage from Barcelona, he arrives with his whistle in his pocket after training and laughs when he takes it out. After three seasons watching Barcelona women’s matches from the stands as an assistant – although with a great weight in the club – he is now the first coach after the goodbye of Jonatan Giráldez. He did not know that he would be the substitute, but when the time approached, he began to plan the season from the shadows without neglecting his responsibilities. In his beginnings he went through youth football at CP Sarrià and Hospitalet, first as a player – he broke his cruciates and meniscus – and then as a coach. Black coffee and fascinated by creativity, excellence lies in its normality. He left high school halfway—he confesses “not being the best student in history”—to dedicate himself to coaching courses. In 2017 he landed at La Masia as a coach, always in the men’s team and as a second. He got to know “professional football” in Romania, at Viitorul Constanta, alongside Rubén de la Barrera for a year until 2021. “We terminated the contract and returned. I was looking for a team for a few months, and Jonatan called me. I didn’t know him, nor did anyone else. staffonly to Markel Zubizarreta. I didn’t master the feminine, but I came with my eyes closed,” he confesses. Outside of football, he keeps his lifelong friends. His frown and serious expression on the grass is deceptive: he is funny and his eyes narrow when he smiles. Without hobbies, superstitions, he is not extremely meticulous, but he is demanding. An unknown to many; He doesn’t give it importance. And it sends a message of confidence: he always went and wanted to be a coach. Now the Champions League begins against Manchester City (9:00 p.m., Dazn) and he wants to take Barcelona to the top again.
Ask. What advice did Jonatan Giráldez give you before leaving?
Answer. He told me: “Be you. Transmit as you are.” I am quite as is, without hesitation. And clearly it wasn’t going to be any other way.
Q. And what is it like?
R. Very passionate about what I do and the game, and quite calm in my day to day life. I have had an incredible family, very good friends who have always supported me, because in this world one day you are here and another you are not. I started as a coach when there was no money involved. But Pere Romeu is not the same as he was five years ago, and he will not be the same in one year.
Q. Is football more of an obsession or a passion?
R. Passion. Although there is always a point of obsession in her.
Q. He gives the impression that he is serious.
R. Not at all… An important person at the club told me that he was a good professional, and that he was not that serious. I liked it. My presentation is that of a serious guy, but the reality is that I am a very open person with whom you can talk about everything.
Q. Are you overwhelmed by being in the spotlight?
R. I don’t really like social networks, I don’t spend time on them. I’m pretty much on my way. I don’t know if it increases the coach’s ego in the long run, but today I am the same person with a different responsibility.
Q. Barcelona is his first experience as a first professional coach. Are you afraid or proud?
R. Not afraid. Pride a lot. It is the club of my life, the one I have seen grow. I have been training since I was 15 years old, before I did it with young boys, now with the best players in the world. And although I’m only 30 years old, I’ve been training for many years and it’s good for people to know that I always wanted to be a coach.
Q. I already had a close relationship with the players. How do you mark the limit?
R. It’s a natural relationship. They know that now I make the decisions. Now I have more responsibilities: before I dedicated myself exclusively to what worries me, which is analysis and training, and now I am managing all the departments of the team. I am here so that every day they push themselves to the maximum and if it happens, they will have the opportunity to play. But no one is guaranteed a position.
Q. Who did you tell first?
R. To my parents, obviously.
Q. What did they tell you?
R. Well, let’s see… (laughs). At first: “Are you sure? But when will this come out?” But then a lot of excitement. I’ve been going to Camp Nou all my life, and watching my father and brother play.
Q. It comes from family.
R. My father is 75 years old and still plays football. Since he was little he always played on the courts of the University of Barcelona with his group of architects. Every Saturday I went to watch their games. Then I played my whole life until I was 21.
Q. Why did you leave him?
R. I liked being a coach more than a player. The ball is controlled with the foot, and that generates many inaccuracies, and I like to try to understand the game and football within its chaos and uncertainty. I like to direct, analyze, and be creative in terms of football ideas because I try to give coherence to situations. Since I was a child I have always liked playing more than anything, perhaps because I thought I would be better at it (laughs).
Q. He loves to go into detail.
R. We work on specific needs by position and others that are specific to the player through training and video. Keira Walsh is not the same as Patri Guijarro, although they are midfielders, they are two different players. I like to go into detail because I am quite reflective, I try to go with the scalpel to the bottom to understand the why.
Q. Also in life?
R. In what I like.
Q. For example.
R. My father is an architect, my mother a landscape designer and my brother a film director. I have always been tied to the artistic world, to creation, and that makes you see things in detail. I really like music, especially rap, all my life, cinema without being an expert, and gastronomy, although I don’t have the talent to be a connoisseur. kitchenettes. With the family we always traveled to see architecture.
Q. He is a big fan of C. Tangana.
R. I’m going to get wet: for me he is the best Spanish artist of recent years. I have listened to him since his beginnings, and I have grown with his artistic process of maturation. It made me wonder what he was doing with each album, and in the end I understood it. Thanks to him and other artists, urban music has been put on the national scene. He has turned a vacant lot into a garden.
Q. What is Pere Romeu’s football like?
R. Be dominant through possession, try to prevent the rival team from having the opportunity to counterattack us, generate many scoring opportunities and be aggressive, both in attack and defense, to concede as little as possible in our goal.
Q. How do you motivate a team that has won everything?
R. Trying to improve themselves every day. Know what you do well so you don’t stop doing it and what you don’t do so well so you can improve. It is the key to collective success. My goal is for this team to play better every day. So far things have been done very well, and for me who has been inside, it has been absolute happiness. But in football and in life you can always improve. Although we don’t have small challenges, because if we do, the players only focus on that. The other day, naturally in training and with a joke, we did say that, if we scored a goal from a corner, the assistant coach would bring breakfast. But it was something anecdotal.
Q. The first rival in the Champions League will be Manchester City.
R. It will be a nice match between two teams that want to dominate through possession. We will have to bring out our best version, but we will arrive well prepared.
Q. Are all four titles possible?
R. Yes. Let’s go for it.
Q. What would success and failure mean this season?
R. Life is never successful enough or failed enough. I’m not one for extremes, life is much more than that. Success is that my team is recognizable every game of the year.
