“Put a Maque in your life,” was heard again at the Paris Games, in the bowels of the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Lille, where Spain won the bronze after another display of energy from this 36-year-old Toledo native. “That’s a good phrase,” laughs Jorge Maqueda on the other end of the phone. “But then you have to put up with it. From time to time, I am a bit annoying, very competitive. I always want to win, I push myself a lot and I push others,” this right-back acknowledges his own character that is as generous as it is, at times, excessive. His push in the match for third Olympic place was key and that was his last service to the Hispanics. “I had given everything and it was time to make way for the new guys. I didn’t see myself reaching the next Games either,” he confesses. After achieving his tenth medal, he told Jordi Ribera that he had reached that point, with 211 games and 510 goals. In the last two matches against Italy and Latvia, his absence was one of the signs of the beginning of the new Olympic cycle.
Fully immersed in the final part of his career, this summer he landed in Polish Kielce, the team led by Talant Dujshebaev and where his sons Álex and Dani play. “Because of my age, now I have to put more sanity into my actions, although sometimes things can arise and maybe it doesn’t seem like it,” he leaves floating in the air without wanting to go deeper. A phrase that refers to the sad episode that took place a few weeks ago during the League match against Wisla Plock, in which, according to reports, he bit a rival in the great brawl between the two Spanish coaches, Talant and Xavi Sabaté, with cross accusations between the technicians of racism and serious insults on the track. Both have been punished with six games and Maqueda, with four. “I don’t want to go into the subject too much. It has already happened and I am serving the sanction,” the player says airtight.
Because of my age, now I have to put more sanity into my actions, although sometimes things can arise and it may not seem like it.
To understand Jorge Maqueda’s last years we have to look at Macarena Aguilar, his partner, a key figure in the best generation of the Guerreras (bronze in London) and the person who, by his own admission, has tried to put him in his place. “His character has nothing to do with mine on the floor. Thanks to his experience and tranquility, I have achieved everything I have,” he confesses. “He told me that I was wasting too much energy complaining or trying to encourage others, on things other than the game. I had to focus more on myself,” he reveals about some talks in which there was no room for complacency. “I would come home from a game and think I had done well, but she would analyze me and you would realize that I had not played that well. It made me better; “I put my feet on the ground,” he says.
Of all the hand-to-hand conversations, he does not forget one, especially in Skopje, when he played for Vardar (2015-2018). “He asked me to wake up because, as it was, I wasn’t going to get out of there. It opened my eyes. I continued doing what I always did, but handball had evolved and that was no longer worth it to me. It was a serious talk and he told me ‘you will know: if you want to continue at the top level, you must change something’. I modified, above all, my diet and physical preparation. He had a few extra kilos and was not very explosive,” recalls the former player also from Nantes, Veszprem, Pick Szeged, Vardar, CAI Aragón, Alcobendas and Barcelona.
Nowadays players don’t take defeat so hard
Beyond ups and downs, corrections, or even slip-ups, Maqueda is clear in his last stage in the elite that the character of his generation, “inherited from previous ones, is lost.” “Now they don’t have that desire to compete and go die, and that can be transferred to the games. When you win, you’re on a high. But if you lose it, you think that it is not the end of the world and that there will soon be another. Before you would lose and you would spend the night without sleeping, thinking about what you should improve and waiting for what the coach was going to tell you. That discomfort has been lost. “They don’t take it as seriously as we did,” explains the Toledo native, who also recognizes a technical difference in favor of the young people.
“They can have more quality. Since they were little they have practiced the handball that we do in professional categories, when before there were many differences, and that is why it is less difficult for them to adapt when they reach the top,” reflects Jorge Maqueda, a cook who, already thinking about the future, always dreamed of opening a bar or a restaurant (he did two cooking and establishment management modules), although he is no longer so clear about it. “I don’t know if I would be willing to sacrifice all my free time to be in there,” he concludes from the pleasant Polish cold.
