Former Real Madrid captain Nacho Fernandez spoke about all sorts of things in a recent interview with Relevo. Many of the things they talked about were about Real Madrid, where one question was whether he still watches the games of his former club. He said: “Yes, especially the first few games seemed strange to me. When I watched the league games, the Super Cup, it was strange. But well, I’m getting used to it now. I love watching the team. I try not to miss any game. Here in my family we are Madrid fans for life. Both me and my children. Here we celebrate every goal, every game that is won. And we suffer the same as when I was a player. It’s our club, it’s our team and we will always want Real Madrid to win.”
Nacho’s decision to leave the club
“From the outside it may seem easier, but it’s been a very complicated year for me, very difficult. It’s true that last year I already had doubts, but they weren’t clear doubts either. That’s why I made the decision to stay. Besides, I had a very important challenge for me, which was to be captain. I decided to stay and I was right, of course. But this year, I don’t know, as the weeks and months have gone by, even though it’s been a year when things were going more or less well, because I think that in the whole season we only lost two games… I was playing, it’s true that I was sent off twice, which also hurt me at the time, but it’s been a good year. In any case, it’s been difficult internally because I already had those doubts.
“Those doubts have already become a decision. And I knew, and I soon spoke to the club, I think it was around February or March, more or less, to tell them my decision and then you play with that a bit, that you have to keep focused on the game by game, you are playing for the Champions League, the League, but none of that has influenced me. I even think that it has made me live those months with so much excitement, knowing that only me and my family, logically, were the only ones who knew that they were my last games or probably my last months, it has made me live it with more excitement and I would say that I even played more relaxed. It has helped me to play better.”
Nacho on whether Florentino Perez tried to convince him to stay
They couldn’t convince me either, because that’s what I’m telling you, they understood me, they supported me in my decision. But they just throw it at you. ‘You’re at home’, ‘One more year’… It was like that, they supported me, they know me, they love me a lot and logically they wanted me to stay. But it’s always been easy with the club, every renewal has been done in one day, there have never been any problems, neither on my part nor on their part. Madrid is my home and I know that in the future I will return.”
Nacho on if he has been close to leaving in the past
There have been times when I felt like I had to play more, or that pfff … Close to leaving isn’t like I was about to sign with another club, you know? There are times when maybe you say ‘this year I can leave’. But then every summer, I’ve sat down with my club, with my coach, obviously with my family, and together we’ve made the decision. And we’ve never made a mistake: Have I been close to leaving?
“Well, there have been years when I’ve had doubts. I think that like any player, you play less or you have a year where you don’t win and you feel like trying something else. But the decision has always been the right one. We’ve never made a mistake. I don’t regret anything at all. Even now that I’ve left, I’ve never regretted it precisely because of that, because I think I’ve closed my time at Madrid in the best way. And that fills me so much that it has driven me to that motivation and energy and to live life in a different way.
Nacho on how he came to the decision
“It’s not something you just wake up one day and say, ‘Enough is enough’. At least in my case. This has been many months, many days… And even though I’ve been lucky enough to live through one of the best periods of Madrid, the life of a footballer, even though it may seem easy from the outside, there are also tough times. Madrid is a club that demands you every day, that demands you to be good, you have to win every game… I’ve been at the club since I was 10 and I left when I was 34. That demand is tough. And I repeat, I’m lucky because I’ve had the chance to experience the best of Madrid. But it’s hard to be there day after day, to have to prove it, to have to fight, to see if there are new signings… That demand in the end also wears you down mentally. And although my motivation has always been enormous, I’m a person and I think it’s a decision that has come day after day, week after week, until you reach a point where you say ‘This is it, that’s it’.
“I had been thinking about closing things for a while, something that had been driving me crazy, that I wanted to end my time at Madrid on a high… Obviously, I had never dreamed that I would end it like that. I mean, being captain, lifting the Champions League, that’s something you can dream about, but it’s very difficult for it to happen. So, as the season went on, I more or less saw that we were going to win the League, and that I was still performing at a very high level. I didn’t want to spend a year at Real Madrid, that maybe I would have to play less, or that things at club level would go badly because you don’t win anything… So, it was like, the weeks kept going by and inside I said ‘That’s it, that’s it, that’s it’. Until of course, you get to the quarterfinals, the semi-finals and on top of that you win the Champions League. That’s when I said ‘This is the moment’.”
Nacho on his decision to not play in Europe
“Yes, yes. It was something that I was very, very clear about, that in Europe no. I mean, there was no possibility at all. I know that some teams have shown interest, but there weren’t even contacts, there was no option to play in Europe. But no option. The market there is very closed. And the radical change that I was looking for was to go to the United States or come to Arabia.”
Nacho on whether he is worried about people ‘forgetting’ about his departure
“I’m not worried at all. I know that people love me. I also said it when I said goodbye, feeling the affection and love that they have given me all these years and now that I’m gone I know that I’m going to have it for the rest of my life. For me, winning Real Madrid is one of the best titles I’ve ever achieved.”
You can read the entire interview on Relevo’s website.