Photograph By USA Today Sports

Just a Kid from Tuilla

Sep 16 2015
theplayerstribune.com

Hello, David. Welcome to New York.

This much I could understand. The man in the nice suit extended his
hand. I shook it and smiled. Then he said something else, and I got
very nervous. I think he asked me a question?

We were standing in the tunnel outside the locker rooms at Yankee

Stadium. I had just moved from Atletico Madrid to New York Citys
new football club, NYCFC. It was one of my first trips to the stadium,
and I was walking around, taking it all in. When I was growing up in
Spain, we knew very little about America. New York City was a place
that only existed in movies. But the one thing we did know was the
Yankees. So Im standing there looking out at this huge symbol for
American sports, my new home, when all of a sudden this very
important-looking man in the nice suit walks up to me.
I had no idea what he was saying. I was not even entirely sure who he
was. Then I picked up the word Steinbrenner and my heart sank. At
that moment, I realized my English lessons watching American TV
with my daughters were not getting the job done. I had felt so confi-
dent learning conversational English from the Disney Channel, but
now all of a sudden I was standing in front of Hank Steinbrenner in
his ballpark and I could not express myself the way I wanted to. I
wanted to say so many things to this important man, but I felt
trapped in my own body.

Hank and I looked at one another for a few seconds in silence. I

turned to my translator: Please tell him that I am working hard on
my English! Hank laughed and said that it was okay. At that moment,
I realized that I needed to get serious with my English lessons and
hire a professional tutor. This was my Welcome to New York
moment. They say that everyone has one.

In order to explain why I feel so lucky to live in America, I need to

explain where I come from.

When I think of my childhood in the small town of Tuilla, Spain, three

things come to mind: football, coal mines and apples. The football
part is not unique to my town. All across Spain, millions of children
follow the same routine. They go to school and then come home and
play street football until it gets dark. If you walk through any small
town in Spain, you will see the broken windows from street football
games. Often the games would be more than 11 vs. 11. It would be a
free-for-all of maybe 40 kids. We knew that if we went home for din-
ner, that would be the end of our night. Our mothers would make us
study and go to sleep. So whenever our energy was low, we impro-
vised by jumping the nearest fence and borrowing some apples
from the orchards around Tuilla. Some of the faster children may
have even borrowed a few rabbits from the nearby farms, but I was
never that quick.

Then I picked up the word Steinbrenner and my heart sank.

We were all chasing a dream.

Everyone knows the story of The American Dream. But in Spain, we
have our own version. When I was growing up, The Spanish Dream
was to put on the roja national team jersey and win the World Cup for
the first time in Spains history. It is not an exaggeration to say that
the dream started before I can even remember. When I was four years
old, I was playing with some older boys when one of them fell on my
leg, breaking my femur. It was such a bad break that the doctors told
my parents that there were two treatment options. I could get surgery
immediately, which would be easier on me but limit my mobility for
the rest of my life. The other option was much more difficult, but had
the chance to heal my leg completely. I would need to be in a plaster
cast from my ankle all the way up to my hip for many months. There
was a chance that if this didnt work, I would have a limp for the rest
of my life.

For my father, there was only one answer. We would choose the hard
road of the leg cast. My father was a football fanatic, and from the
moment I was born, he did everything in his power to help me
become a professional footballer. He knew a lot about hard work. Like
most men in Tuilla, he was a coal miner. Every day when I would
wake up for school, he would already be 800 meters (2,600 feet)
below ground working a shift in the mine. Coal is what sustained the
entire town during that time, but it is very dangerous work. My
father lost a few friends in tragic accidents, and he had many surger-
ies from mining injuries. The elbow. The knees. And, of course, the
nose. We joke with him to tell us about the time he fought Mike
Tyson.

After I got my leg cast, I was confined to a bed for two months. My
right leg was propped up by a sling. I do not remember any of this,
but from what my parents tell me, the only thing I could do was
watch football on TV and listen to music. I couldnt go play with my
friends outside or go to school, which made me so restless that I used
to kick, kick, kick my left leg so much that finally my mother sus-
pended both legs from the slings so she could get some peace and
quiet.

When I was finally allowed out of bed, I still had to be in the cast for
four more months, but one of the first things I did was hop out to the
yard in front of our house with my father. It was there that we
started my football dream together. I grabbed onto the wall to sup-
port my weight and moved my cast to one side while my father rolled
a football to my left leg. I am naturally right-footed, so this was my
weaker foot. After a long day in the mine, he would stand there for
hours rolling me the ball so I could pass it back to him.

To this day, I am able to use both feet very well, which I have always
said is a great virtue for a footballer, especially a striker. I was never
the fastest player or the most technical, but I could always hit the ball
well with both feet, which makes a striker very unpredictable. That
ability started because of my father sacrificing his time to roll the ball
over and over again to my left foot when I was four years old. As
much pain as I was in, his back was probably in more agony after a
long day in the mine. But he never complained. He really loved it.
From that day on, my father was always by my side watching when-
ever I played. He would move his shifts in the mine so he would be
home in time for my practices, even if that meant starting at 2 a.m.
From the time I was five years old playing park football until I moved
to Zaragoza at 20, I never had to take a single bus to training. My
father was always there to drive me.

When I was growing up, I had no concept of America. It seemed like a

very far away place. Almost unattainable. The kids in my town never
even saw the possibility of visiting one day. I did not see a horizon
beyond Spain, or even beyond my town. When I was 9-10 years old,
my goal was just to make the first team of Sporting Gijn, the only
real professional club in our province of Asturias. You hear many sto-
ries about the academies of Barcelona and Real Madrid where chil-
dren are basically already treated as professionals. This was
definitely not my story.

When I was finally signed by Sporting Gijns youth team at 16, I was
still in school studying to be an electrician. The professional develop-
ment program required you to do an internship installing air condi-
tioners, and projects like that. But because I was playing for Gijn,
the games conflicted with the internship. So I had to make a choice:
Do I continue with my studies and be practical, or do I put it on hold
to follow my dream? I knew my father would not take much convinc-
ing, but my mother was a different story. She was not as passionate
about football and wanted me to earn a living. So I ended up making a
deal with her: I gave myself two years. If I didnt make Gijns profes-
sional team by then, I would give up football and go back to being an
electrician-in-training.

Two years later, my parents were one of the 16,000 fans in the stands
at El Molinon when I made my professional debut for Gijn. This was
probably the happiest day ever for my family. I was not yet a foot-
baller. I still had to keep my place on the team. We had no idea what
would come next. But I achieved the goal that my whole family had
sacrificed so much for. I put on the red and white Gijn shirt and
played in the stadium where my fathers hero Quini had played in the
70s. My mother cried that day. We had no idea that in 10 years, I
would be raising the World Cup trophy for the first time in Spains
history. (My father cried that day). The only thing we knew then was
that my electrician career was on hold.

David, what are you going to eat in America? The food is not like
Spain.

Over the next decade, I was able to climb higher and higher, from lit-
tle Gijn to Zaragoza, then to Valencia, then to Barcelona and Atletico
Madrid. Not bad for a kid with one leg a little bit shorter than the
other. But all of those clubs were in Spain. I had spent my entire
career in my home country. I could use both feet, but I only knew one
language and one way of life. When I got the opportunity to move to
America to help build the legacy of a new club with NYCFC, the chal-
lenge was too exciting to pass up.

My family was really excited for a new life, but my Spanish friends
kept asking me, David, what are you going to eat in America? The
food is not like Spain.

When I arrived last year, not long after meeting Mr. Steinbrenner, I
took my children to go ice skating in Bryant Park. I was overwhelmed
with happiness watching them skate around. There was a giant
Christmas tree and the skyscrapers were all lit up. In my coat and
hat, nobody recognized me. I was just a dad watching his children
have fun like my father watched me only their park was a lot nicer
than mine in Tuilla. When they finished skating, they were starving.
There were 10 of us total, so we were faced with another Welcome
to New York problem. Where were we going to eat with such a big
group without a reservation?

My kids were all very excited for pizza, so we ended up wandering

around until we found a tiny pizzeria. There were only two tables in
the entire place. It was classic New York, just how you see in movies,
with the framed photos on the wall and everything. When the pizza
came out, we all had a slice and everyone went crazy. I have been all
over the world thanks to football, and I can honestly say that it was
the best pizza I have ever had in my entire life. It was a small
moment, but that night I really felt like I was living my American
Dream.