Watching the documentary series about Luis Enrique that Movistar+ has just released, you want to hand in your columnist or commentator card and join the International Front for the Liberation of Journalism. With nuances, of course, because almost everything in this life can be nuanced, including the discredit to which our union is often subjected in pursuit of a spectacle that hardly serves to give reasons to those who believe that those called to analyze or comment on how much It happens in the big competitions of professional football, we have no… idea. This is precisely how the aforementioned series is titled on the recommendation of Lucho himself: You have no… idea. Fill in the dotted line freely.
After two games in Ligue One, some of the most famous French commentators dedicate the most serious headlines to the Asturian that one can associate with professional contempt. To avoid the quotation marks, or destroy the impression of the first viewing, those first capital letters come to tell Luis Enrique that he is little more than a jerk, that he believes he is the inventor of football, that his decisions cannot be further from common sense or that handing him the reins of the Parisian giant is beginning to seem like a typical boutade for Napoleon. But not even the French Napoleon, the Emperor, but the Napoleon who is the protagonist of Animal Farm, that pig whom Orwell turned into a capricious leader first and a ruthless dictator later.
Regarding the character of Luis Enrique and his relationship with the press – as if that were what was really important, as if being liked by opinion leaders and the pizarristas weighed the same in the balance as leadership capacity or tactical knowledge – and We had gotten an idea long before the Asturian crossed the Pyrenean border and looked, in Paris, for a new challenge befitting his stripes. No one can be surprised by his reluctance, but what is striking is the ease with which he incurs generalization and stumbles in the thick line that he attributes so much to those who prioritize the butchery headline over calm, even considered, analysis.
We discover nothing by stating that his career seems reduced to an unequal struggle between his merits and the image that the major media outlets decide to convey to the general public, insignificant details about his person, his public forms and his way of relating to the messenger. The results attest to the first: in the Barça subsidiary, in Celta, in the old Barça for adults (now it is almost a nursery) and even in the National Team, with which he was more than once a few steps away from the glory. And yet, it is not an impossible task to find his name associated with the word failure, as if not winning in a sport where only one wins were reason enough to engage in the worst nouns.
There is more than one Luis Enrique within Luis Enrique, who throughout the documentary shows himself like a Russian doll until he ends up deep in the coach, in the marrow of the person. Any erroneous consideration ends up colliding head-on with facts that are not debatable: he is one of the best technicians in the world and an exceptional person. Regarding the first, you can discuss as much as necessary calmly and objectively, never out of resentment and preferably without ill will. There can be no doubt about the second at this point unless one insists on reducing everything to a practical case of bad press: theirs and ours.