The "unforgettable" trip that changed the lives of Balde, Casadó and Fermín

Torello"At that time I didn't know where to find most of the countries we went to. These are experiences I will never have. They are unrepeatable. At 15 I had already travelled more than my entire family," admits Eric Vega (Masquefa, 2003). With Barça they travelled all over the world – to Colombia, the United States, Japan and all over Europe – but there is one trip that has remained etched in their memory above all the rest: in Senegal, in the winter of 2017, alongside Alejandro Balde, Marc Casadó, Fermín López and Xavi Simons, another of the talents of La Mas. They were the U19 A team. "It's an unforgettable trip," he adds. He remembers looking up where Senegal was on a map at home, with his parents. "I knew it was an African country, but I had no idea where it was." Vega has just signed for Sabadell B, in the Third Federation, after months without being able to enjoy football due to two injuries to his left knee.

"Maybe we were a little scared, but more than scared, it was uncertainty. We didn't know what we would find," says David Navarro (Barcelona, ​​​​2003). They remember the vaccines in Barcelona. The arrival in Senegal. The bus trip from the airport, with their eyes glued to the windows. And the hotel. How could we forget it? "It was absolutely outrageous. It was spectacular. Luxury, five-star. The rooms, the pools, the food: everything. It was impressive," says Miki Juanola (Lloret de Mar, 2003).

Navarro says that leaving the hotel, going through that door, was "a brutal reality check": "It was like changing a movie. It was a very striking contrast. It was impressive to see how a wall could change, from one side to the other," he says. It was enough to walk a few meters to discover reality, so raw and so alien. The street to the hotel was the only one that was paved. The rest were made of dirt and were full of half-finished houses, built with four bricks, plastic and fabric, of people who came or begged, of stray dogs and even goats devouring rubbish because there was nothing else. They also remember a fish market. "They had all the fish on the ground. There were flies everywhere and it smelled very strong. It was a market that you couldn't see in Catalonia or Spain. Anywhere in Europe," says Arnau Ollé (Vilassar de Mar, 2003). One day he saw a man bathing a horse in the sea: "It was all very new things for us. It was one shock after another. It was like entering another world."

"We were fifteen years old, but the differences were so abysmal and extreme that it was impossible not to notice the situation there and reflect on it," Juanola points out. She talks about a very enriching life experience and Vega nods: "At this age you don't think and you're not aware of everything there is in the world. And there are still people my age and older who don't know. A trip like this makes you open your eyes. The difference between the life we had and the life of life." The lesson they learned is that everyone laughed and smiled and was happy, however. Navarro explains that in Senegal they understood "that we are privileged, that we have to value what we have at home and that there are people who really live like that."

They also visited a school and an orphanage and one day they went swimming at the beach and ended up making a party barefoot on the sand with children from the village. Juanola says that it was surely the most beautiful football match of his life: "With all the pressure that we had and that we always have, that was very pure. Very realistic. There, all that mattered was playing, having fun and hanging out." "It was life. Children playing football, all mixed together. Living. Like it happened many years ago here," says Carles Martínez (Barcelona, ​​​​1984), the coach. The trip was made to play two friendlies against an African team from the Aspire academy, with one defeat (3-2) and one draw (1-1).

Talent, hunger for titles and soul

But in Senegal, football was "completely secondary. Football was only part of the game for two days during the days we were there." He talks about a boy with a white shirt on which Luis Suárez and a number 9 had been written on it with a marker. He was very clear that the trip to Senegal had to be used to live: "We couldn't waste the day in the hotel."

Martínez coached Gavi's generation (2004) for one year and Balde, Casadó and Fermín's generation (2003) for two, perhaps less talented than others but with more hunger and soul. The season of the trip to Senegal was Casadó and Fermín's first at La Masia. "Fermín suffered a lot until he made the change, but you saw enormous talent. Balde has always had incredible power. And Casadó was a leader. He is one of the smartest players I have coached," says Martínez. Today he is coaching Toulouse, tenth in Ligue 1.

Ollé plays and studies at a university in North Carolina. Navarro and Juanola, internationals in lower categories, are in Alcorcón and in the second team of Basel, in the third divisions of Spain and Switzerland. The cases of Balde, Casadó and Fermín, and even more so those of Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsí, may perhaps make one think that they are already late. But they are only 22 years old. "The dream has not been lost," says Navarro. Juanola speaks with pride and with an "immense" happiness of his three former teammates, but assures that "there are so many factors that you can never say whether a player is going to make it or not." "I would not have taken a chance either because someone would make it or because someone would not make it," he reflects.

Juanola, a carpenter by trade, bought a handmade wooden mask in Senegal and gave it to his grandmother. Eight years later, it still hangs on a wall in his house. It will be a memory forever. The mask and the journey.