Rubén Albés: “In football there is no achievement without luck”

Rubén Albés (Vigo, 1985) is the fashionable coach in the Second Division. The Albacete coach will take care of GOAL to take stock of his coaching career to date. With an affable and close character, Albés leaves behind a waterfall of headlines in every response. He is a person who you can see that he loves football and likes to talk about it. In this first part we will talk about his beginnings and his experiences abroad, to talk about football in general later on.

How does a 25-year-old boy become the youngest coach in a national category so far from Vigo, his home country?

“I played football in amateur categories, even in Segunda B, although I was in the squad and played little. At the same time, I studied a degree in physical activity and sports and began to ask questions and think about the game, about certain things. But there are moments when I realize that I am not going to be a professional football player, but I do like football and at that moment, through a contact person, I get the chance to train at Valencia and they offer me to train Alevín and Benjamin J. For me it meant the fact that I am at a club like Valencia is a lot, although I had already trained in other major categories”.

“We are doing a good job and Burjassot is without a coach for next season and they are proposing it to me. And with that inexperience and daring that you have when you have lived little football, I am embarking on that adventure. And at the same time I worked in the team from the University of Valencia that participated in the Second Regional and to date that is the only title I have”

Then comes the opportunity to go to Morocco with Benito Floro, how do you know each other?

“I met Benito Floro through his son Vicente. I had dinner at his house once and talked to Benito about football. We argued a lot because we almost never agreed, but I tried to listen to someone who spoke so much situations.” I think we got on well in that sense and the possibility of going to morocco arises from one day to the next, he called me and proposed to go with him to morocco and that now i had to to decide. adventure. That’s why I’ve always thought about getting out of your comfort zone and looking for new challenges, even if some of them aren’t successful from a sporting point of view, they allow you to evolve as a person.”

Morocco was a difficult experience, wasn’t it?

“For me, going to Morocco was a brutal, vital experience. First because I got to be Benito’s assistant and then because you go to a country with different traditions and culture, you learn a new language and a hugely passionate way of living football. And yes the only black point is that there were a lot of standard situations and you also learn certain contexts where it is much more difficult outside Spain you have a lot less information and you have to adapt to the players because for example a Spanish player is not the same as a Moroccan”.

“Benito Floro taught me to analyze until I found the solution”

Those who know him say that Floro was very methodical and “heavy” in his beginning. What was he like towards the end of his career?

“More ‘heavy’ (laughs). We could analyze a single game for five or six hours. We watched the game a lot of times, we wrote down by hand or in an Excel certain elements of where everything happened and we gave it was a spider. And sometimes I thought it wasn’t that necessary, but he taught me that ability to analyze until I found the solution.”

After a few years in Novelda and Eldense, the opportunity comes to train two subsidiaries in Valladolid and Vigo. What is the difference between coaching a subsidiary and a first team?

“You live very well in a subsidiary. It’s like Walt Disney. You have good fields, very talented footballers, little pressure from the media, little pressure from the clubs, unless you are far from performance on an objective level. There are also young players very permeable to acquire concepts because they are not yet intoxicated”.

goal

In Vigo you went from fighting for promotion to fighting for relegation in a year, what happened?

“There is a lot of turnover at the level of the teams. You come off a good season and some footballers go through to the first team, others are revalued and go to other places. You regenerate and therefore the performances are more volatile”.

“In Vigo we had a precious year where we felt we could get promoted and another that was definitely the most difficult year emotionally of my career because of the responsibility you feel in coaching the team that you have been a fan of ever since. was a child and could be relegated. In the end everything went well, but you feel a responsibility and a greater connection than maybe at other clubs.”

in Romania We lost the first two games and I thought they would kick us out in the third.”

Then comes the opportunity to train in Romania. Not much has been said about that, what happened there?

“We arrived in a desperate situation on the part of the club. I arrived without much CV at a club that had been recently formed but were in the First Division. We got into relegation, we lost the first two games and I thought that they would throw us out in the third inning but in the end we came back with five wins and two draws and there was a bit of ‘hype’ regarding the figure of the young coach Young coaches value the youth as it goes well and when it goes well it goes bad they talk about lack of experience or not. You know how to manage a dressing room”.

“The second season we were within the targets and in December there is a change of sports management and there are some situations that are beyond standard. The new sports management is somehow trying to prevent us from following certain situations abroad and we decided to reach an agreement with the president and get out of that situation”.

What do you think is your greatest virtue and your worst shortcoming as a coach?

“My best virtue as a coach is probably to generate good energy. In other words, to feel good. I think there are two important things for a player to feel good. First, self-esteem, which you have to give a player. give confidence. And the other is the fact of enjoying day to day, enjoying this profession, which is sometimes difficult. Being able to enjoy that and create a positive climate”.

“And as a big mistake, I probably know less about football than I would like. I think sometimes we are too tactful, we complicate the game and the teams lose emotion when playing. What often makes the difference in matches is that emotion.” what the team is playing with.”

“YesIf there’s no conviction, there’s no top-level performance, if there’s no luck, there’s no achievement, and if there’s no confidence, there’s no self-esteem to play”

How important is it to connect to the locker room?

“For me, it is undoubtedly the most important thing. If there is no conviction, there is no top-level performance, if there is no luck, there is no achievement, and if there is no confidence, there is no self-control. And this does not mean that there is discipline for certain aspects, there are some ‘red flags’ that must not be broken, because then that climate is also broken”.

“Ultimately, all companies try to create good working environments because the employee performs better. And in football, which is another company where there are a lot of emotions, that feeling of employees is very important.”