Rodri shared an office with Enrique Cerezo. When he was in the Atlético de Madrid youth academy, the current Manchester City midfielder left school and headed to the sports city. “He had two hours from the time he arrived until the training began,” he remembers. The wait killed her studying. He didn’t do it just anywhere: the current president of the red and white team left him a place in his office. A stage in which Rodri educated his legs, but also his head. “Life gives you a physique and a way of playing football, but the important thing is the absorption of concepts. When you have spent your entire life educating the brain to study and sacrifice… then you apply it,” explains the pivot. That he has not stopped exercising his head; He finished Business Administration while beginning his career at Villarreal. It is precisely that mentality, that way of understanding football that Rodri wants to instill in the national team: “When we won the Nations League, the team took a mental leap.”
That mental leap is what Rodri has tried to make clear in his first public appearance before Spain faces Andorra (tomorrow, Wednesday, at 9:30 p.m.) in Badajoz and Northern Ireland (Saturday, at 9:30 p.m.) in Mallorca, the last two preparation matches on the eve of traveling to Germany to start the Euro Cup. “We go with the mentality of winning. With the idea that Spain is once again on the top echelon. This team is not going to go out and speculate in any game. We are not afraid of anyone, basically because we have faced everyone and it is very difficult to beat each other,” commented yesterday the footballer trained in the Atlético and Villarreal youth teams.
Trained by Escribá and Calleja at Villarreal, promoted by Simeone at Atlético and consolidated as the best pivot in the world with Guardiola at Manchester City — “I can’t say that,” he dissimulates —, Rodri forgets from match to match in the Argentine coach, also from the moderate speech of his coach in the Premier League. Spain, according to Rodri, is going to Germany to win the fourth European Championship in its history, a success that no other team has achieved. “We are not going at all with that mentality of going little by little. We have a complicated group stage, but the objective is to win. And return that competitiveness to Spain,” he started. And, in case there was any doubt, he concluded: “Spain is a serious candidate. The group, the national team and this team are growing a lot.”
Rodri does not hide his leadership. He has assimilated it on the field, now he also exercises it in the Red locker room. A role, in any case, that he already plays at City. “I am very proud of the player I have become and not just on the field. I like what I represent in the eyes of my colleagues. That they listen to me in the locker room, in training… I enjoy it because it was a journey, from my arrival until today, in which each year I have imposed myself more, earning the trust of the group. I feel this respect, this trust. When my teammates see me they say: “Okay, let’s follow this guy,” he revealed in an interview with L’Equipe, about his place in the citizen group. Something similar is happening in the Spanish locker room. “From experience, I can help young people. I have already experienced a European Championship and a World Cup and I can transmit peace of mind to the younger players. Now I am one of the captains and I want to do it,” he insisted in Las Rozas.
Rodri has never stopped thinking, he has done it on the field and also in the locker room. And he doesn’t want to know anything about game by game, he wants to win: “I don’t want to keep up. I want to go further, but I know that titles are won collectively.”
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