(Bad) Press and Luis Enrique | Football | Sport

After watching the documentary series about Luis Enrique that Movistar+ has just released, you want to hand in your columnist or commentator card and join the International Front for the Liberation of Journalism. With nuances, of course, because almost everything in this life can be nuanced, including the discredit to which our union is often subjected in the pursuit of a spectacle, which hardly serves as a reason for those who believe that they are called upon to analyze or comment on what As much happens at the big professional football competitions, we have no idea. This is exactly what the above-mentioned series is called on the recommendation of Lucho himself: You have no idea. Fill in the dotted line loosely.

After two games in Ligue 1, some of the most famous French commentators are devoting the most serious headlines to the Asturian that can be associated with professional contempt. To avoid quotation marks or to ruin the impression of the first viewing, these first capital letters tell Luis Enrique that he is nothing more than a moron, that he considers himself the inventor of football, that his decisions could not be further from reality. common sense or the fact that handing over the reins of the Parisian giant to him is beginning to seem like a typical bummer for Napoleon. But not even the French Napoleon-Emperor, but Napoleon, the main character of Animal Farm, that pig whom Orwell turned first into a capricious leader, and then into a ruthless dictator.

As for the character of Luis Enrique and his relationship with the press – as if it were really important, as if love for opinion leaders and pizarristas weighed in the same scale as leadership qualities or tactical knowledge – and We got This idea has been around for a long time before the Asturian crossed the border of the Pyrenees and began to look in Paris for a new challenge to match his shoulder straps. No one is surprised by his resistance, but what is striking is the ease with which he generalizes and stumbles over the thick line he so attributes to those who favor a bloody headline over calm, even measured analysis.

We find nothing in arguing that his career seems to have come down to an unequal battle between his merits and the image that the major media decides to convey to the general public, minor details about his personality, his public form and his manner of handling the messenger . . The results indicate the first: in the Barça branch, in Celta, in the old Barça for adults (now it is almost a children’s club) and even in the national team, with which he was several steps away from glory more than once. . And yet it is not difficult to find that his name is associated with the word “failure”, as if not winning in a sport where victory alone was reason enough to use worse nouns.

There is more than one Luis Enrique, who throughout the documentary shows himself to be a Russian doll until he finds himself deep in the coach, in the very heart of the man. Any erroneous reasoning ultimately collides with the non-negotiable facts: he is one of the best technicians in the world and an exceptional human being. As for the first, you can discuss as much as you want calmly and objectively, in no case out of resentment and preferably without ill will. There can be no doubt about the second at this point, unless one insists on reducing everything to the practical case of bad press: theirs and ours.