Bio

1984

I was born on the 20th of March 1984. According to what I’m told my arrival was just what my parents, Flori and Jose, needed to calm their nerves, as my brother and sister, Israel and Mari Paz, who were seven and eight respectively, were a pair of tearaways whereas I was always pretty well-behaved, in the house at least.

1985

I can’t tell you much about my first year of life because I don’t remember anything, and my family haven’t told me anything interesting about it either but I imagine I crawled about and cried a lot like all kids at that age.

1986

When I was only two I started to kick my brother’s ball around the house, and that was my first contact with football. Around then another of my hobbies was throwing things out of the window. Unluckily, one day I threw a model truck, which was full of money, out into the street. That story is pretty well known, but I think it deserves a mention in my biography, because of the difficult time it caused for my parents. It ended up as just a family anecdote, though.

1987

At three years old I was just like my older brother. He’s seven years older than me and has always been, in some ways still is, the mirror that I look in to see myself. On the other hand my sister Mari Paz is the only one who has always let me get away with everything. In her eyes I’m still the little boy I was then, and she still treats me as if I was.

1988

At four years old I started to become really interested in football. I remember my dad played with me whenever he could, especially when we were in Gastrar, a little village in Galicia where we went for our holidays. The games basically consisted of kicking a ball around, but at that point, that was the limit of my footballing aspirations.

1989

I was five when I joined my first team, Parque 84. There was a footballathon organized in my neighbourhood sports centre, in Fuenlabrada, the area I grew up in. The matches consisted of 15 or 20 kids running around after a ball, really crazy! Nonetheless, for a kid like me at that age it was a really big deal. I was in the team for two days, that is to say for as long as the footballathon lasted. Like any other five-year-old kid, besides playing football I played other things, like bottletops, marbles, and rough games like el culete and gol alemán, among others. In nursery school I had my first girlfriend- I can’t remember her name! And they say your first love is the one that leaves a mark.

1990

From when I was six football became really important- thanks to Oliver and Benji on TV! It was a cartoon series, really good. The story was about a group of lads who start by playing football for fun, and end up as professionals. After the show me and my brother would go out and play football. I liked to imagine I was a professional footballer like the kids in the series. I played in goal until one day I got a couple of teeth knocked out by the ball and decided that my career between the sticks was finished. Great save, though.

I’ve got great memories of my childhood, but one in particular is really important: chatting with my Grandad about Atleti. My Grandad was a strange case in terms of football, the truth is football hardly interested him, but nonetheless he was passionate when it came to Atleti. The image is still fresh in my mind of my Grandad in front of me, talking without stopping, trying to get across to me the importance of being an Atletico de Madrid fan, and as witness to those wonderful talks have a plate, with his name and the Atletico badge. That plate is the best trophy I’ve got.

1991

Once I’d got over my goalkeeper phase I started to play as a forward. In that period my neighbourhood café organized a team, called ‘Mario’s Holland’. It was the second team I played in, and I got in even though I was younger than the league limit.

I played indoor football for three years, in a league, with a team strip and everything, and my dream of becoming a footballer really began to develop. Thanks to this experience I got to know what it meant to be in a team, and to have team-mates, both of which have been really important for my development as a person and as a player.

As I said before, every summer I went to Gastrar with my family. It was a big family gathering, my grandparents, uncles and aunties, cousins and of course me and my brothers were all there- I was the youngest of all, the baby. Obviously I always had to tag along, but I didn’t mind because you could keep me amused any old how in those days. For the first seven years of my life, my family, my friends, football and summers in Gastrar were the I only things I needed to be happy.

1992

Just after I turned eight my parents bought a house in Estorde, in Galicia. Although at first this might not seem so important, it turned out to be because it was there that I met the girl who ended up being my girlfriend, Olalla. Apart from that, that time in my life was important because I made friends with a group of people who are still my friends today.

1993

I was just a nine-year-old kid when I first visited the Atletico de Madrid trophy room. I remember my dad didn’t want to tell me where we were going, I don’t know which of us was more excited: him, dying to show me, or me, waiting for the big surprise. When we got there you still couldn’t say, because we both loved it.

I’d seen photos of the trophies, but I’d never seen them close up, I’d never touched them and that day I did both, and luckily since then I’ve had my hands on on or two more…. All my life I’d heard my family talk about them, the World Club Cup, the League trophies, the Cups that Atleti had won, and that day I got to see what I’d always imagined.