Xavi wrote a
beautiful letter to Luis Aragones.
Found a translation on reddit(!) of all places. Seems accurate enough:
“You are not Japanese, you understand what I say”, he told me one night. I’m seeing him, in my hotel room, and I know I’ll miss him. A lot. Because I really loved Luis Aragonés. And I talked a lot with Luis.
I knew he wasn’t alright, but I never thought he had something so serious, that he would leave so early, so quickly, in that way. “I’m fine, I’m fine”, he said whenever I asked. I talked to him every now and again, because ever since I met him, he was an absolute referent for me. I guess he’s the coach with whom I’ve spent the longest talking about football. I went up to his room and we talked for hours, sometimes about the style, “that’s the key, Xavi, knowing what game we want to play”, always about the importance of getting the good players together on the pitch, and how important it was to not be afraid of anyone, any team, however much faster than us they ran. “You and I both know that the ball runs faster than they do. And we play it better than they do”, he said. My best memories of Luis were of a chat, bumping into him in the corridor or in the dining hall, because he always left you with something. And he was always right, always.
Luis was always straightforward, at face value; he looked at you during training, he would go towards you and say “You’re slacking off, you’ve come to train but I don’t see you. And I don’t like slackers”. And he would leave. Luis never lied to you, he was for real. “You’re not playing because you’ve been awful this week”, “Are you tired or what?, “You’ve been fantastic today, you’ll nail it this week”. “Do you think I suck my finger like a baby, that I’m stupid?” That was Luis, close to you, really.
The other day I remembered an anecdote of the first time he called me to the national team. He hadn’t called me for the first session, and in September, when I got there, he was waiting for me. “What did you think? That the old son of a bitch wasn’t gonna call you, eh?” I was fucking scared and said, “No, no, I never thought that,
mister”. And he, pure Luis, said “yeah, yeah, yeah, like you’re gonna fool me. Come on, go upstairs and we’ll talk”. And we talked that day and a thousand hours.
Luis has been fundamental in my career and in the history of La Roja. Without him, nothing would have been the same, it’s impossible. Everything started with him, because he got all the short guys together, Iniesta, Cazorla, Cesc, Silva, Villa... With Luis we did the revolution, we changed the fury for the ball [reference to the team's old nickname,
La Furia Roja (the red fury), back in the day when they had to play like Stoke to be considered manly], and we showed the world that you can win while playing well. If we hadn’t won the Eurocup we wouldn’t have won the World Cup, but of course, that was also thanks to the arrival of Del Bosque, another genius.
Luis got the piss taken, but he was the one who showed us the way, the one who gave Spain the style it has today. In that, we always agreed. Luis was the one who saw what we had, he bet on us midgets. “I’m gonna play the good ones, because you’re so good, we’re gonna win the Eurocup”. And we won it. He was intelligent and very brave.
Personally, Luis made me feel important when my self-esteem was disastrous. He gave me control of the national team when I didn’t even rule at Barça. “You rule here”, he said, “and I will get criticised”. I decided to give back all that trust on the field. If I was chosen the best player in the Eurocup it was thanks to him, although he refused to take credit. He had unforgettable gestures with me. I wasn’t well when I went to Germany [’06 WC, I guess], but he waited for me. He would come to Barcelona to see me. Paredes [a personal trainer] would come with me to hike up La Mola [a mountain] while I recovered... Luis called me all the time. “Try harder Xavi, don’t fall asleep, I’m counting on you”.
The word “football” in the dictionary should have a picture of Luis next to it. Luis is football made man, football personified.
Farewell, mister. And thanks for everything. And remember, you and I were never Japanese.
