off day activities

Taking advantage of the day off that Mou conceded to his team yesterday, El Pirata headed to the Valle de las Cañas sports center in Pozuelo to preside the first training session of his new school.  The center has 15 groups registered at the moment, all made up of kids under the age of seven.  They all received scholarships to form part of the school, meaning that 100% of the costs are covered for them.

The objective of the school, in the words of Esteban Granero, is to “make sure that all kids have the facilities that I had to grow as a footballer… the best equipment, the best coaches… so that they can grow.”

Meanwhile, Karim Benzema and the injured players, including Sergio Ramos, headed to Valdebebas to train.  Karim arrived at 17h, and worked out in the gym and on the field for 90 minutes.  He coincided with Sergio Ramos, who should be back in the line-up against Racing.

Also at Valdebebas were Marcelo and Kaká, who met with Brazil’s national team coach Mano Menezes there.  They were joined by José Mourinho.  Menezes wanted to see how Kaká was recovering, and talk to Marcelo, who could be making a return to the seleção due to his excellent form of late.

And Sergio Canales gave up part of his day off for his club, as his presence was required for a Real Madrid web site report about him and Paco Gento, a Madrid legend who is from Cantabria and came to Madrid from Racing de Santander at the age of 19, just like Sergio C.  And with Madrid playing Racing this weekend and with Paco’s birthday being today (he turns 77), the timing couldn’t be better!

Fun fact: each time Madrid has won the Champions League, they’ve had at least one player from Cantabria on the team.  The Cantabrians who have featured and won for Madrid include La Galerna del Cantábrico (the Storm of the Cantabrian Sea, Paco’s nickname.  He’s also the only player ever to have won six of those trophies (in 1956-60, and 1966), Pachín, Marquitos (Marcos Alonso’s grandfather)… For La Séptima, the cántabro was José Amavisca, and for La Octava and La Novena, it was Iván Helguera, with Pedro Munitis joining in for the 2002 victory.

I’d love to write: and for La Décima, the Cantabrian player was Sergio Canales!

Anyway, back to Paco and Sergio.  They met at the Bernabéu, and Sergio gave Paco a birthday surprise: a typical cheese from Cantabria, with two candles in the form of the number “7” stuck on top, in lieu of a cake.  Paco blew out the candles and his birthday wish was that “Canales would win many titles with Madrid, as many as I did.”  Then they exchanged autographed footballs.  Sergio’s read, “to Paco Gento with all my affection.  The best.”  Paco’s read, “to the future best player of Real Madrid.  With affection.”

Read the two of them talk about each other (and other things) here.

My favorite parts were Sergio saying that he’s kept all his shirts from the day he debuted with Madrid, and Paco saying that when he was playing, they weren’t allowed to keep the shirts, not even if they offered to pay for them, because there were only 11 of them, since there were no reserve players at that time.  Sergio was also told that if he scores a goal on Saturday, he can dedicated it to Paco, who will be in the palco, but Sergio responded by saying that he wouldn’t celebrate a goal against Racing (good kid) but that the next goal he scores will definitely be dedicated to La Galerna del Cantábrico.

And finally, Álvaro Arbeloa tweeted that “we” are enjoying the off day.

So, who did he spend his free day with?  If I could choose, I’d say Pipita, because Álvaro spent the day teaching him the intricacies of twitter.  The truth is probably his family though.