The Pride of Vallekas

"Thanks for having this interest for lower teams in Spain. That is something that even in my country we lack as everyone cares about Real Madrid and Barcelona but don't see the local and amateur football dying year after year. " -Juan Manuel Serrano "Thanks for contacting me...[projects like these] make the world of football grow!" -Xavi Pérez Ureña For the last 19 days, I published 45 interviews by fans, writers, players and coaches. I wasn't expecting to have so many wonderful people respond to me, and I thank them for their time and cooperation, as well as for answering so many questions! I'm going to be honest here - I certainly wasn't expecting to interview an ex-Barcelona player - let alone two of them. I wasn't expecting to interview a footballer with three consecutive league titles. Or the assistant technical director of Rayo Vallecano. Or an Ipswich legend. Or the nephew of Juan Sabas. Or Mikel Alonso - again. I also...

When did you make the decision to pursue football and what motivated you to do so? I never thought I would have been good enough to become a professional player. In fact, from 19 to 20 years old, I played for a team called “Caprabo” (neigbourhood supermarket) 7 divisons below La Liga. Two years later, when I was 22 I played for Barça, I played two "El Clasico” games against Real Madrid in front of 100.000 people in the stadium and 400.000.000 live in TV. We also won La Liga,…. as much as I remember it I still feel it wasn’t real. I mean, I was focused on my Physical trainer Degree, when some Tercera teams (similar to League two) paid attention on me. From there everything went so fast, intense and quite crazy. How did it feel like making your debut with Figueres? That was so nice. I’m from Figueres, I always lived there and it's where I live now. That was a kind of little dream made true, In addition I had a very good season which allowed me to sign for FC Barcelona...

In the 2013-14 La Liga, Osasuna were relegated along with Valladolid and Real Betis. This was the season Real Betis were playing amazingly well in the Europa League but bottling it in the league. And even though they had nothing to play for, some of their players may have had a reason to not play for anything. Irregularities in Osasuna's accounts and the fixtures at the end of the 2013/14 season has led the Prosecutor Office to ask for more than 14 years in prison for Osasuna's former administrator, Ángel Vizcay, and more than 12 for former president Miguel Archanco and former director Txuma Peralta. But there's more, they also have requested 11 years and 11 months of imprisonment for ex-directors Juan Pascual, José Manuel Purroy and Sancho Bandrés, and for ex-Betis players Antonio Amaya, Jordi Figueras and Xavi Torres it's 2 years in prison and a 1.9 million euro fine. Let's look at this one by one: The prosecutor wants Vizcay to release more informati...