"If they don't beat us 10-0, they feel like they haven't beaten us"

TorelloIt was Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Around 9 in the morning his mother, Saturnina, died, and around 9 in the evening his wife, Fernanda, died. "It was a hard blow," Feliciano Hernández (Pozuel del Campo, Teruel, 1952) spits out crudely. "Suddenly I was alone and I had two options. To shut myself in at home or to continue in the world of football. It has helped me a lot. It has served to keep me encouraged, happy. To fight, to go out. At home you say "fuck", but being here relieves you mentally. It seems to unburden you of what happened. The numbers say that it is the worst team in the lowest category of Catalan men's football, the fourth Catalan league. Eighteen defeats in eighteen games: two by 15-0, one by 14-0 and three by 10-0. Seven goals for and 147 goals against.

But he does not lose his passion. He smiles when he talks about this small club from this small municipality, with just over 1,700 inhabitants. Hernández arrived in Cabrera de Anoia, half an hour from Igualada, four decades ago. The family emigrated He came to Catalonia in the sixties to look for a future. Last summer he planned to go on holiday for one or two weeks to Pozuel del Campo, but he couldn't: only three players from the previous season were still there and he stayed to complete the team somehow. "It would be a shame if football disappeared because it's a town where there's practically nothing. There's a petanque court and now they've built two paddle courts, but football is the town's banner. It's what carries the name of Cabrera throughout the region up to Barcelona. Sometimes we go to towns that say to us: "Oh, but is there football in Cabrera?" At the last minute he was able to get the necessary parts to be able to register the team. It's the only thing the club has. They train and play in the Torre de Claramunt, a neighbouring town, because in Cabrera de Anoia there's no pitch.

He has been the president for three seasons and also acts as a delegate. In the 2022-2023 season he was also the coach, out of necessity: he won the title at the age of seventy. "The sporting situation hurts. The matches are long and hard. The players do what they can. They are not Messis or Ronaldos. But we have to keep going," he admits. He dreams of a victory. "It would be a great joy. It would be crazy." But the existence of the team is already a victory, and for so many reasons: "The dressing room is a family. It's a hug."

"Sometimes it's even embarrassing"

Guillem Riu (Capellades, 1989), midfielder, admits that "sometimes it's even embarrassing" to lose so often and therefore, because of what people will say, but he claims that football is "a gift". He has rejoined this year, at 36. "The worst team in Catalonia? Yes? No kidding. You mean? –he answers laughing–. Football is like life. The attitude you have when playing football is the attitude you have in life: if you throw in the towel you will achieve very few things. Sometimes if you try hard, things get better." The objective is clear: to win a match. "Throwing in the towel is the easy way. Giving up, going home and screwing up a pan at the weekend. Well, I take a picture of the pan anyway, but I come here and sweat and break my face. If ten or fifteen people screw me, I come out with bloody legs and the next day I don't get along."

Three or four years ago he composed the club's anthem together with Emilio Benito, the oldest player at Cabrera along with Javier Aguilar. "At 45 years old, that had never happened to me. If the rivals don't beat us 10-0, they feel like they haven't won. But we don't give up. We want to have a joy. We deserve it. We have to fight," says Aguilar. He has a small construction company. The alarm clock rings every day at half past five in the morning. And despite the ordeal that this season is, he says that it is worth going to bed at 12 at night – Tuesdays and Thursdays – after training: having dinner alone, not seeing his daughters, aged 12 and 13, because when he gets home they are already asleep. It makes up for it. Why? "Because football is an oasis. You go out, you switch off, you don't worry. Everything is different there. Sometimes I play with the sons of men who were classmates or football mates. I have been asked if I came as a coach. "No, no, still as a player." Football gives me life. It makes me feel alive."