"It was a city without law": the years of Quique Cárcel, sporting director of Girona, in Cádiz
Two decades ago, the sporting director of Girona lived an experience full of adventures at the Ramón de Carranza
GironaFor Quique Cárcel, Cádiz is like his second home. He lived there from 1996 to 2000, a period in which he accumulated 131 matches as a midfielder for a team that was then competing in the Second Division B. This Saturday he will return to the Ramón de Carranza, now renamed as the JP Financial Stadium, in what is his thirteenth season as sporting director of Girona (9 pm, LaLigaTV Hypermotion).
“Quique was a hidden leader. Cadiz is very particular and we Catalans are Catalans, more wait-and-see and diplomatic. But from a distance and in silence, he knew how to treat the team and make himself important and necessary,” conveys Jordi Gonzalvo (Barcelona, 1947), the coach of the Andalusians in the 1998-99 season. “He had the right amount of intelligence to connect the midfield with the forward line. Technically he was very good and tactically he was always well positioned. He knew how to read where he had to be and correctly interpreted what he had to do,” he says regarding the performance of a footballer who had a long career in modest football, where he played in the youth systems of Barça, Sabadell, and L'Hospitalet, and who barely tasted professional football, with about ten matches in the Second Division with Leganés.
Cárcel has very good memories of his time in Andalusia. At 22, that was his first experience away from home. “When I arrived there, he had already been there for two seasons and was very adapted,” recalls Gonzalvo, for whom the experience turned out to be a bit bitter: “People didn’t forgive me for replacing a local coach, as if it were my fault. And Catalans aren’t exactly well regarded in that area. So if you add it all up… I always felt I had to fight against those prejudices. Besides, the city is beautiful to go to for three weeks of vacation, but living there stably is another thing. Back then it was very tough.”
What was Cadiz like in the late nineties? “It was a lawless city. The per capita income was very low and there were a lot of labor problems. The mayor was far-right and the people were far-left, with everything that entailed. I was stopped more than once on the highway because there were workers protesting because they weren't getting paid or had been fired, and the police responded by shooting rubber bullets at them,” replies the former coach, who has a few stories to tell. “At four in the afternoon, the kids were let out of school, and they spent more hours on the street, surrounded by drugs, than staying at home, in a healthier environment. The most common thing you would see was three guys without helmets on a motorcycle. I always wondered how it was possible that this life was normal there.” Gonzalvo's team fell three points short of making the play-off for promotion to the Second Division, which Cárcel had already played the year before, when he was eliminated in a league that included Barça B with Francesc Arnau, Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernández, and Óscar Álvarez, now the assistant coach of Girona.
The 'cazón', a moat, and a priest
The extreme passion with which the Cádiz fans devote themselves to their team was already being felt, back then. And there is a reason for it. “When we were returning from any away trip, we would enter via the Puente de Carranza. It might have been three in the morning and there would be three hundred men fishing. They would stay there until seven in the morning, fishing. What they caught the most was the cazón, a small shark that is cooked. When the sun came up, the fishermen would go off to sell it to restaurants and with the money they collected they would buy a ticket, because before, not everyone could afford to go to the football. Since being able to enter the stadium meant a huge sacrifice and effort for them, they demanded the maximum from us because they felt they had the right to. The stadium was always full,” he explains.
Cárcel also left behind some unforgettable anecdotes in Cádiz. In his second match at the Carranza, in October 1996, he scored a goal against Realejos. Mad with euphoria, he jumped towards the stands thinking there would be a fence to climb, but he found that, in its place, there was a moat, into which he fell headfirst. The moat was two meters deep, with half a meter of water, and was covered by a thin net to prevent balls from falling inside. Fortunately, it was just a scare.
Gonzalvo laughs when his memory takes him to Holy Week and Carnival. “Everyone gave their all, those days. Quique and the rest loved going to a pub or a winery and having a finito. In fact, I have a picture in the office where they are all in costume. Quique is the third one starting from the right in the front row and he is seen dressed as a priest, with his hands in prayer. We had good times, yes,” he says, before adding that “it is very commendable to be at Girona for so many years and achieve what he has achieved”: “He is the ideal man to build a project that is sustainable over time,” he concludes. Cárcel has completed 545 matches as the white-and-red sporting director, of which he has won 226, and is seeking his third promotion to the First Division with the Girona side.