Ter Stegen, to Zubizarreta: “At first it cost me the world not to play”

“In good hands” is the ‘goalkeeper to goalkeeper’ talk that, as an intimate document, presented Barça One now that they have been fulfilled ten years since Marc André ter Stegen signed for FC Barcelona along with Andoni Zubizarreta head of sports management of the Barça club. Using the silent witness camera and no program driver, Ter Stegen was honest with whoever signed him, especially about how difficult it was for him to play less than he expected in his first two seasons., when Claudio Bravo was a starter in the League, and for him there are KO competitions, the Champions League and the Cup “I was left to work and complain, and that’s what I did,” he acknowledged. “When you signed me, I wanted to play a lot of games and it started in the worst way,” he confessed.

The conversation flowed naturally, with constant interruptions and asides. “Signing Claudio Bravo tests you,” argued Zubizarreta, “Now I see it more calmly. I understand what you thought when you signed Claudio (Bravo). Betting on a young goalkeeper like me can be good or bad. Claudio has played for Real, he knows the League and he showed it in the two years he was there; He made it spectacular. I just had to work and complain… and this is what I did,” commented Ter Stegen honestly. “People believe that it’s bad, that the desire to play is negative. But it is a process and now that we know the whole story, if we are sitting here together and not angry, it is because everything has developed in a positive sense,” answered Zubizarreta. “In the first two years, day -day everything is more planned around Claudio’s needs and I need other things. When it was my turn to play, I had two or three days of more definite preparation for myself. I arrived without speaking another language, at first it cost you a world,” reflected Ter Stegen, who He now acts as a regular starter compared to Iñaki Peña. “Iñaki wants to play and I understand him. Surely his time will come to succeed, whether here or elsewhere, but Daily life with a goal is not easy. It happens to me by choice. Always tense. At Barça now, everyday life is more planned according to my needs. It’s impossible to find the exact balance so that everyone is happy,” he described. “Iñaki is a bit like me and that’s the difficulty. We work every day (…). I can tell him that if he needs me, I’m there, almost like a child, I know what happened to me in the beginning, when I didn’t play, I was angry. You have to turn that around and if you don’t change the chip, you’re left with negativity.”

ZubizarretaPorto’s sporting director awaiting official appointment, He recalled his past life together in the Barça goal with Juan Carlos Unzue. “We were roommates for two years and we never talked if ‘you play or I play’. People missed that. I told them, ‘it’s not what he wants, I can’t give it to him: he wants play and me too .’ The only thing we could do then was to have a good relationship,” he noted.

During the conversation, almost exclusively focused on the job of the goalkeeper, Ter Stegen spoke about his progressive integration with Barcelona, ​​​​​​​​​​​revealed that with Sergi Roberto he speaks “almost always in English” and praised his recent defense partner, Pau Cubarsi. “a super-receptive centre-back”, to whom if he had to “help with anything, it was more emotional, like after the heavy defeat against PSG” in the role of a captain who pushes you to “show your face”, “Out of responsibility to the team that you have to talk to others one way and others to another young people have different problems than veterans, they will know in a few years, when they have children,” he jokingly concluded.

Zubizarreta asked Ter Stegen if it bothered him that they only highlighted his footwork, “because it seems to me that you do a lot more as a goalkeeper.” “Yes, but because of the style we have, what stands out more is this, because you see a lot of me with the ball at my feet. You told me when you signed me, that ‘here you can get one or twice a game.’ ‘ and that is the most difficult, that ‘the goal of Barça is greater than the others’.” “You prepared me and even now those ideas follow me, because even if I like what I do, at Barça there is always extra pressure and it is not easy to manage it, now less than social networks, you can go crazy,” Ter Stegen said.

Zubizarreta recalled the signing process that he made the decision because of his status as a former goalkeeper. “If you have to find a goalkeeper that is my job, although Albert Valentín is the head of scouting, they know that he told them ‘tell me if a goalkeeper you see looks better or worse. A day Jordi Melero, who is ‘wearing’ Germany, he told me about a boy in Mönchengladbach who must be very good because he sat the veteran goalkeeper And the first game I saw you, ‘mistake’ The captain approached you and said something to you and I saw the personality. I also saw Víctor Valdés there,” he emphasized.