Gaizka Mendieta exclusive interview: “I don’t think Xabi Alonso was given the time he needed”
The former Barcelona and Valencia midfielder spoke exclusively to AS USA about a range of topics.
Gaizka Mendieta is a man who knows what he likes, and a man who is indubitably happy. Sitting under that blonde mess of hair with which he floated through Spain’s top division for so many years, it’s music that still keeps his spark going when football takes a back seat.
“Once I had a bit of money I bought my first records”, he said, “I can remember listening to music all my life.” The 51-year-old former midfielder won trophies in Spain and England and a deadly level of talent saw him grace his national team’s midfield for 40 games, but once football was over, a quick dip of the toe into behind-the-scenes jobs was enough to move away. “I have my licence, I did it purely because I wanted to learn. But once I did it, I realised it was not for me.”
Back to music then. Gaizka Mendieta has performed as a DJ in the group Gasteiz Gang, even performing at the Champions League final. “Music is for anything and everything, he says, “sometimes to motivate you, sometimes to relax, sometimes to disconnect, to go to concerts.”
“As a player I liked to do different things to get out of the daily football pressure,” with music top of the list of methods to forget. “It’s almost 24 hours living [as a player]. I thought it was important to live your life with things apart from football. Music was always part of it and it still is. I still buy records.”
“When I went to England there were record shops everywhere, it was fantastic”
American and English music were already on his radar when Mendieta moved to Middlesbrough to play in the Premier League, and England was “a paradise”, but not just for football. “When I went to England there were record shops everywhere, concerts every day. It was fantastic.”
Football, it seems, was a conduit for discovery: “playing in different countries expands your taste and exposes you to different styles,” yet playing football was “fantastic while travelling and discovering new bands and new music.”
Getting away from the relentlessness is a theme for Mendieta nowadays, and he remains smart enough to know when to step away. “Not a manager, no,” comes the response as I edge towards the inevitable question of why he never took the step so many of his now elite-level compatriots have.
Assured and firm, with the solid head shake that tells me I’m not the first voice to ask. The one that got there before me was his own inner monologue. Gaizka’s been around the block enough to know: “I don’t think I could have that passion, motivation. And then you have to have that resilience with players. They’re not an easy bunch.”
But above all, the endless cycle of winning is no longer an attraction: “You have to win, number one. In certain places you have to win with a certain style. And then you have to deal with players and keep everyone happy. Depending on the type of club and the type and level of the players, you need certain abilities to keep up with them.”
“And it’s not only the team. Managers have to deal with so many things daily. You cannot imagine what they have to do and they have to live with this. It’s not just what we train tomorrow or how we play on the weekend. Players are human beings with families and problems, they have issues all the same. So are presidents and boards. There are a lot of things managers deal with every day. When I saw that, I wasn’t prepared to make the sacrifices required to become a good manager.
“There’s no book because you cannot tell the whole truth”
When that pressure was a daily requirement to be one of the best players in the world, only one solution could suffice: “I could listen to classical music or heavy metal, I have no problem with that. It’s different when you want to achieve something. Before games Gaizka says he used music for motivation, now it’s more relaxation, “just having music in the background” is what he craves, “I can listen to most things.”
And I can listen to Gaizka talk football, music, or his breakfast. For hours. I want a book of his life. Written in poetry. “There’s no book”, he tells me. Brilliant. “Because you cannot tell the whole truth.” My eyebrows raise, and he spots that: “To be honest”, shoulders back, “in a way I would like to, because it leaves a legacy for everyone, even for my own family and friends, to see and understand things they don’t know; it’s difficult for them to know everything.”
“But when I started talking about certain things,” shoulders now forward, “it was: you can’t say this, you can’t name this person, that person. So you’re already not telling the full story. I’m not saying no, but it’s difficult not telling everything. Maybe in a few years I won’t care about anything. But at the moment it’s not happening.” That’s that then.
“It’s more about former colleagues and teammates,” he clarifies. “We all know sometimes you have to sell things that didn’t really happen. I’m not judging anyone, but if I do mine, I’d want it to be the full truth.”
“You cannot expect Vinicius, Mbappé, and Bellingham to press 90 minutes”
The last time we spoke, Xabi Alonso was edging towards a Real Madrid exit. Mendieta was right when he said that “I don’t think we’ll see the team that Xabi Alonso wants” - we never did. “We haven’t seen that at Real Madrid with any managers,” he had added. Does he still believe so?
“I said Madrid would not play Xabi’s way because they don’t have those players. They’re not that type. You cannot expect Vinicius, Mbappé, and Bellingham to press 90 minutes, 80 minutes, 70 minutes; all of a sudden you have four or five players that are not doing what Xabi was doing at Leverkusen, with a different profile of players. It’s just a different type of squad. We’ve never seen Madrid play that style.”
With Arbeloa, Madrid may have turned a corner but they’re still driving the same car. Gaizka, however, sees positive steps and, like he prioritises, happy players: “He changed the narrative straight away: he said ‘I want my players to attack. I want my players to have fun.’ He wanted to get into the players’ heads and motivate them.”
“It’s just a different type of player management. Good managers, or great managers, convince players to do what they want in a way where there is compromise. You cannot expect players to do everything you want if it’s not within their nature, and then you have to give something as well.”
Alonso sacking “unfair” but “a matter of time”
“That’s why it’s so difficult to manage these big clubs,” he responds when I interject, questioning if elite management is more about managing egos than it is having the tactical ability, “It’s not about systems and fitness. Nowadays a lot of coaches can do that to a certain extent. It’s about how you get players to do what you want and keep them motivated throughout the season. That’s another challenge for managers at big clubs.”
Xabi Alonso stepped into elite management at Bayer Leverkusen, but the difficulty went up a thousand levels when negotiations with Real Madrid came to a close and he became the new head coach. 24 wins from 34 fixtures wasn’t enough to see him keep his job, and big losses kept coming for the former midfielder. Mendieta calls his sacking “unfair”, although adding that he’s not sure “if we can use that word in football.”
“But I don’t think he was given the time that he needed. He wasn’t given the things that he actually requested. Obviously it’s down to him to accept or not accept when he started, the demands of not wanting to go to the Club World Cup, needing a number six, number five, a holding midfielder, defenders. All the requests he had, I’m assuming, during the first negotiations with Madrid, he didn’t get. He just went along and continued to do what he did.”
Having played for Barcelona, Mendieta knows what it’s like at one of Spain’s top two institutions. “Difficult” is the word he uses to describe the dynamic of Real Madrid and the demands there, but “you obviously just have to go with it.”
“It looks now like it was a matter of time that he was not going to be there for too long and he was going to be out of Real Madrid before the season ended.”
And with that we close in on the deadline for Gaizka’s availability. A busy man with fingers in many pies, the former midfielder is still enjoying his life of football, music, and relaxation. One day we’ll know what tales he has kept inside the book that exists in a superposition state, although that’s a story for another day. His musical tastes, however, are not hidden. “I can listen to almost everything. Apart from reggaeton. That’s just not for me.”
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This interview was carried out with thanks to BetBrothers.es.
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