"What's the point of continuing to play football for a year if you're not there anymore?"

Barcelona"Going from playing professional football to not even being able to play with your friends is complicated, very complicated," Joan González (Barcelona, ​​​​2001) confesses to ARA. May 26, 2024, was the last game of the Catalan midfielder's career. A goalless draw on the final day of Serie A at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium reaffirmed the good season for Lecce, the team from a city located at the heel of the Italian boot. González came on in the 56th minute, replacing Swede Pontus Almqvist, little imagining that these would be his last moments as a professional footballer.

"I'd never had any health problems related to my heart," he admits. But two months after that match in Naples, an extrasystole detected during the club's medical tests prior to the start of preseason set off all the alarm bells. "The club doctors saw that the morphology of my heart was different. They started running tests and concluded that I had heart disease. The club sent me to Padua to rule out possible cardiomyopathy, as they are quite good at cardiac issues there. Once, they told me I had to continue my treatment in Barcelona. I decided to come to Barcelona to see Dr. Josep Brugada, one of the best cardiologists in the country," he recalls.

Once the medical visits to Barcelona began, González returned to the city he considers home, Sant Cugat del Vallès, to be closer to his closest friends. "The help of family, partner, and friends has been key to not having as bad a time as one might have expected. It's true that it made me angry, but I've always tried to look on the bright side," he says. "My family has told me to stop thinking about football. They've made me see that the most important thing is my health and that I'm with them. What's the point of continuing to play football for a year if you're no longer there?" he asks rhetorically, valuing his health over his sporting career.

As the weeks passed, González was losing hope of being able to return to the playing field: "At first you always try to think the best, that it will be nothing and that you will be able to move on, but as a human being you also put yourself in the worst situation. Every time you see that it will continue once I won't return, as time goes by and you won't return to play again, little by little you start getting used to the idea of ​​what can happen."

A genetic problem

Unfortunately, this footballer who trained at La Masia has had to hang up his boots to avoid putting his life in danger. "I have a genetic problem in which one of my heart proteins, which is dedicated to joining the organ's cells, when you push it to overexertion, breaks and leaves a scar. This scar causes the electricity that makes the heart pump to eventually pass through, and it releases a beat. I could have a problem," he explains. "I also can't get a defibrillator and continue playing football as if nothing happened, because the heart will still scar more and there will be a time when it will stop working," he adds.

Now González continues to undergo tests, waiting to find out if he will ever be able to play football with friends, since until now the only physical activity he has been able to do is go for a walk: "I'm hopeful that with the check-ups I need, they'll tell me that from time to time I can play football, from time to time I can play football, a few touches." To ease the anxiety of not being able to play football, however, he has a solution. "It seems contradictory, but I like watching football and it's a way to calm my desire to play," he says.

The team he follows most after retirement is Barça: "One of my dreams was to play for the first team. But I also watch Lecce's games, although at first, with everything that's happened, I didn't really want to watch them," he notes. "I also like watching the games of my former teammates, who I'm proud of for having long careers and at least doing it for me," he acknowledges.

"For now, at the start of this new life, I'll try to find some solution that relates to football. I'm looking at how and when, but I don't know. It seems that if you're not a footballer, you're nothing, but there are so many options surrounding football that I have to look at how I can do it and what options I have." González, who is currently studying Business Administration at the UOC, began studying chemical engineering at the UB when he was a member of Barça's youth team and dropped out when he moved to Italy.

Eternally grateful to Lecce

"I'm happy with the career I've had. Leaving Barça was hard, but once they didn't renew my contract, I looked for opportunities abroad. I joined Lecce's U-19 team and spent a year playing in the youth teams until, in my second year, they called me up to do preseason training with the first team in Serie A. I played my first Serie A game. I played my first Serie A game. Quickly. The years I was there went very well," he recalls.

"Both in football and in life, the treatment I received at Lecce has been incredible. Also, I was quite comfortable with the city in Sant Cugat, which is very quiet and has a population of around 100,000," he describes with nostalgia, since his dream was to be able to. After everything he's been through, González sums up his career with overwhelming sincerity: "My dream every day was to wake up, go to training, and make money playing soccer. I wish I could have had a 30-year career."