Girona manager Michel Sanchez has explained that his public calling out of star midfielder Aleix Garcia was in part in order to send a message to his team. Given the attention they are receiving for their brilliant football, he wants his team
During an interview with Marca, Michel made a surprising admission that he pays attention to what the press are saying about him, whereas as most coaches take, or at least say they do, the approach of shutting out as much as possible.
“I listen to everything. The good and bad, I am very self-critical. I like seeing the assessment they make of my team and my work in other places because you can’t just focus on your work and you have to see how you expose yourself to the outside world. Obviously I know who gives constructive criticism and who gives destructive criticism. If I start reading Twitter I’m terrible because there are going to be people who are going to go there only to cause harm and it can cause stress. But I do listen, read and talk to people and see what they transmit to me. Today I am enjoying the moment, the future we will see.”
After their 4-2 win over Barcelona, which put Girona clear at the top of the table following a brilliant performance, Michel said that the victory had put them into another dimension. He was asked exactly what he meant by that.
“By entering another dimension I mean all this. How are we going to be able to handle it? Aleix is the player who has been here with me the longest. He knows what I want from him and what I demand of him. With that slap on the wrist I wanted to show that we have to manage to abstract ourselves a little from everything that is going to come to us. That’s why I told him: we all have dreams, we all have to want to continue growing, but we have something very important inside here, a very beautiful feeling and we are achieving something so great that we don’t want it to break.”
“That’s where the slap on the wrist goes with him, but he has shown that he is there for Girona and will continue the same. But there will be information about Aleix, about Miguel, about any player, because right now they are in incredible form and are putting in great performances. We are news, so the only thing I ask of them is that they have their feet on the ground, that they know how to put things into perspective, that they know how to train one hundred percent, that they come with the mentality of having joy, but not euphoria, because euphoria is bad and joy is good. The message was there because I understand everyone’s positions, but I also want our performance not to be stopped by messages that come from outside.”
The pressure and the attention will be two of the things that Michel will have to add onto his plate in the coming weeks, as they look to see how far they can take the miracle. The question that is tickling many in Spain is whether they can win La Liga.
“It is not the time to talk about being able to win La Liga, but it is time to say that we are a team that can aspire to make Europe. That is very clear to me and the players are showing it to me. In 10 games I will see if there are possibilities of fighting for La Liga, but we have not yet reached the last third of the competition.”
“After 26 or 28 games we will be able to see what Girona’s real objective is, but there is still a long way to go until then. The equality that exists in the first division means that if you lose two or three games you fall in the table quite a bit. Furthermore, we are sure that neither Madrid, nor Barca, nor Atletico Madrid are going to lose much. To be in that top four we have to be complete winners and it is very complicated. I don’t look beyond the next game, but I have the feeling that we are going to fight for Europe.”
