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All this week on NBC4, new products, to new technology, Susan Hogan is showing you how local restaurants are changing the way we dine in and take out in this new world tonight at 6. A new twist on outdoor eating. A lot of it is creating flexibility. How one local restaurant is making their outdoor space mobile, giving you plenty of sunshine and social distance for a stress free meal. It's all part of restaurant revitalization. Tonight at 6 on NBC4, working for you. OK, GEM, you're here in Dublin promoting your messy biography, which is yet another great read. What's it like being so close to such a universally recognizable man? Getting to know the player of a generation on such a personal level. It is an experience because you're entering the life of a guy, not the life of the best player in the world, there's a difference. And when that happens, you have to be very careful of how far you go and if you actually take in the right road and if you are directed the right way, because at the end, you know him, you know his brother, but you're somebody that is analyzing what made him and how he got where he got. So there's a lot of questions that you have to answer via research and by working hard. And by really 20 years of work, that work allows you to get close to people. That allows by word of mouth your name to be recognized and that allows, at that point when you go to what it is, a really small click, the mess is to knock the door and says, "Can I come in?" And when the answer is two weeks later, "Alright, let's do it," then of course you've gone through the most difficult of all obstacles because there was no way I could write this. Same as with a pet book, same as with a system in the brink, I would have written it if it was just from the distance or with clips from newspapers, I had to be inside. And it is a delicate balance that you do between, because I will tell your story, but not so much the anecdote, but how he reacts to things, how he deals with having a father, who is a manager, how he deals with Ronaldo and that kind of thing. And you still have to double check and get close to other people around him to make sure if that's true. Yeah, so there is a lot of that and you are answering as close as you can the questions. Did you feel in any way, I suppose, it's such a well known man, he's such a talented guy, and even though you're a leader in your profession, did you feel, was there an intimidation kind of level there along the lines of what I'd feel today speaking to you? No, no, because this is your first interview, that's probably where you've been, when you're going to handle interviews you realise that the people that you're asking questions to, they're just normal guys. Sure. And they could be Ronaldo, they could be Messi, they could be Pep Guardiola, just some Mourinho. You would have, you know, after 20 years of work, you know, 22 years of work in the profession, you would have had prior moments with them, you would have gone for meals with them, you would have known that they all have the same fears and the same needs as anybody else. And in some cases, even more, because their life is more extreme, but no, no, I couldn't approach these people without, with intimidation or with fear or with distance, I just had to see them as what they are. And it helps, for instance, that I'm not our front of fan, because, you know, you deal with Pep Guardiola and he was gone at the time we were talking, and you deal with Messi and it doesn't get any bigger. But I'm an Español fan, and I see what they've done, I see the good thing that they've done, but I also see that, you know, I don't look at things with, I don't know, with the eyes of a fan, basically. Yeah, so you had that distance, and I suppose they respected that maybe perhaps that you weren't falling or being overly, I think what they respect is what I've done all my old years ago. And I think you realize in your next interview, in the future, when you've done more than a hundred, that it is about communicating and it's about linking with the person you're talking to and it's about listening, and it's about realizing that you are only a microphone, that's all you are. Yeah, then a microphone, if you look enough, it becomes a pen, or you write your own opinions, or you write your own story, or you write this story of these big guys. And if you are very, very, very lucky, and very, very, very good, then you are paid for your opinions. There's perhaps too many people that think that journalism is opinions, that's just the top of the profession. Yeah. The rest is just holding a recorder, and listening, and interpreting, and writing. Sure, absolutely. Well, you've written a lot on not just Messi, but also Guardiola. Is there something that connects the two men in terms of some sort of characteristic or trait, which separates them out clearly, they're both talented men, but they're a lot of talented men. I mean, was there something you noticed about the two of them, some sort of drive or different? It's a good question, because you see that in Raffavonita, just from Mourinho and Cristiano Ronaldo, in Messi and Pep Guardiola, and I think it's a compulsion to continue improving. Maybe even the feeling that they're not good enough. It coincides in all the cases that they have to wear really hard, because they've got not so much the doubts, although in the case of Guardiola, doubts were like, again, extreme, because you're an extreme man in many senses. But just the need to continue doing better. And it gets to a point, it really does get to a point, to most of us, too, that you think you've done enough. And then, and I said, you just comfortable in your position, you earn enough money, you find, but these guys don't count the money they've earned. They just look, they just judge themselves by what they did yesterday, and if it wasn't good enough, then they had to improve, they have to get it better next time. And that, only the really best one, Raffav. I mean, both Messi and Pep Guardiola have it for sure. They have it in abundance, obviously. It was, actually, it reminds me of something I was trying to speak about today, and the piece I was writing. Brandon Rogers was speaking about the drive or lack of it that a lot of young professionals have when it comes to, they signed their first big contract, and maybe the motivation goal was a little bit. Is that what the two guys that we speak about, is that what they have in extreme, that drives keep going on, like you say, you're only as good as your last day? No doubt. And, you know, a lot of people have complained about that, that society has made people weaker, and society has made people wanting to get to the top faster. And, of course, there's no shortcut to the top. That football is a major society, you have that in football as well, a lot of people that don't get motivated enough unless they get very well paid. And a lot of complaints have come from the lives of Cérales Férios, and Brendan, and people like that saying young kids are like that. I wouldn't care about those young kids, that means that they wouldn't make it. Yeah, there's enough people out there to make it. There's enough people out there that will just go through all the stages, beat all the obstacles, and make it to the top. And they will be as good in terms of mentality as they have been for 100 years. It's just people that want to make it. And you only need 25 at the end, you know, so I think I understand the complaint, and perhaps what is happening is that it's a smaller pool of people that have got that hangout, that need to survive, or whatever it is that took people in the past 60, 40, 50 years ago to the top. But in any case, there's enough people out there that really, really want to be footballous. So, Brendan Rogers, we'll have where to choose from. Sure, something that struck me, it was in your Pep Guardiola book, a little story about Messi that really stuck with me. And I've heard you actually recanted a couple of times as well, and it was the whole thing about the "Where Will He Play", and it was quite shocking for me because we have this opinion of Messi. I don't know whether it's received a wisdom or whatever, of this quiet, humble kid. But he was basically pretty put out, wasn't he, when he wasn't getting to play centrally, which is where, you know, he's wonderful. And where there was this thing with Ibra and he was getting shunted to the wing, he put his foot down really, didn't he? Well, that was analyzed from a coaching point of view in the Pep Guardiola book. In the Messi book, I've analyzed it from his point of view. And I think if you reach a compromise from those two angles, what you see is a guy who's played the same way since he was a kid, exactly the same way. And he hasn't changed, even though he's been told every single year, past the ball, play white, stay white, wait for the ball, and he wouldn't do that. He would just go for the ball, and then when he added, he would just dribble to a three and cut inside and stuff like that. That kind of confidence in what he does, that insistence in doing what he does, means that everybody that's on the way had to move, either literally, geographically, to one side, or from the team. And that happened to him since he was a kid. Everybody that was on the way had to live, because they weren't as good as he was, because the coaches felt that the other guys were not giving enough to the team. And actually, the other guys were the ones unbalancing the team, because if you are the coach of Messi, don't you want to give him what he wants? You do, don't you, of course, as a coach. So obviously, that gets interpreted completely different by the people that had to move. Young kids still remember of the age of Messi now, of course, but when there were kids that they, you know, were this guy that was very physical and realized that when Messi came in, he was going to be in the center, so you just have to go to another team. And you got that in every stage. Irreimo, which obviously was on the way for those runs of Messi. And Pébord Déola said to Irre, "Would you move?" And he said, "No." You know, put it in big words. That's what happened. And then the coach has to make a decision, because this guy in Messi is still going to be doing what he does. Now, in hindsight, we say, "Great decision," because we are allowed for her not to get even better than they were in the first year and all the first two years on the Pébord. But it means that there is victims. And of course, you hear the story of the victim, and the victim will say, "You know, this guy just got me out of the way." It is one of the things that I found, again, fascinating in looking at it from the Messi point of view, but it's normal. The coaches do that for me, because I win the games for them. Yeah, so it is what it takes you to the top as well. The confidence that what you're doing is exactly what has to be done. And what's the difference between a guy like that, who has this certainty about what he can bring to the team and where he needs to play, and that's just all there is to it. And on the other hand, we saw Cristiano Ronaldo opening a museum in tribute to himself that recently. You can't imagine Messi doing something similar. But yet, there's clearly that level of ego. Did you encounter that in a negative way in any way when you spoke with the man? I think in the next few months, I don't know exactly, maybe six months, maybe less. There's a museum opening in Rosario, where he's not going to be called the Leo Messi museum, but he's going to show things from people that have been in Rosario. There's a lot of athletes and footballers that have come from Rosario. And Leo has helped, I guess, partly because Rosario did not show the law for Leo until very, very recently. And of course, Matthias, his brother, who collects everything, probably ran out of space where he was, so he was like, "Why do we go and put this in?" But it's interesting how you analyze it. Ronaldo, ego, museum, and you think like, "Yeah, but maybe if he does, you probably justify what him doing it." And he's all about clichés and how we portrayed football in a kind of simple way, because that's why we won. I've got in my head that, as football fans, we stopped growing at 12. So that's why we get so upset when we lose, so happy when we win. That's really fascinating. And generally, our analysis of football, when we have fans, kids' analysis, isn't it? This guy is terrible! He has to go! Emotionally immature. Emotionally mature. And the first time I heard that was from Dustin Hoffman saying that we really started growing when we were 16, he said, or something like that. But then we started seeing wrinkles in our face and white hair, and then you have to become behaved like an old man, because you see that you look like an old man. But inside you are still 16, but in football it's a bit like that. And going back to the question, Christina Ronaldo is motivated by similar things to Leo. They represent different things, because when they are on the page, they behave differently, quite clearly. But they have so much in common. And interestingly enough, they respect themselves so much. When they are in front of each other, they recognize themselves as nemesis, and we all have our nemesis, and they make us better. But we want to be better than them. And sometimes we feel we not. We kind of hate them, the nemesis. But perhaps what it is really is that we hate the fact that we're not good enough. So then we try harder, and there is a lot of respect for somebody that makes you better. It has to be. So Christina and Messi are going through the same stage. Do you feel, again, that the question as to which of them is the superior footballer? For a lot of people it's almost a redundant question, because Messi has so much love from such a wide variety of people. But you do hear people on the Christiano side, and clearly they're both immense. Do you think there's a valid case for both men, or would you see it now? And seeing so much Messi, would you see it on one side of the way? We could argue which one is better. For me, Messi is the best player there's ever been. And that's partly why I merged myself into his life, and trying to find out what he got him there. But I go back to the question. Why do we want just to choose between them? First, secondly, why is there so much fascination about the valon d'or of a solo? This is a collective game. And of course football is a mirror society as we were saying earlier. And that means that we look at it from individuals now, because there are all about individuals everywhere else. You know, it's about me, me, me, me. So I don't like that question here. I don't like who is better. You just enjoy them both. And yeah, I understand that that attracts people to football. The fact that there's two at the top, there's the Cristina Martillo and Chris Everett of football at the moment. But there's this fascinating documentary that you all have to watch. It's called Unmatched. And it was Cristina Martillo and Chris Everett going on a weekend both of them. It's magnificent. I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. 30 by 30. So it's fantastic. It's a little clue. There's somewhere in the book in the Messi book that I wrote. I mentioned that. And you should hear what they're saying. It's like, you made me better. Yeah, no, but I hated you. No, no, it wasn't so much I hated you. It was like, but I envied you because I had so many feelings inside. Chris Everett, the Americans girlfriend, you know, who was the call lady, if you like. And she was saying, Martina, I saw you crying. I saw you throwing the racket down to the floor. And I wanted to do that, but I was told not to do it since I was a kid by my dad. So I had to keep it all inside. And Everett, I was like, I envied you because you kept everything inside. And, you know, we always want to be somebody else. But that same one day, there will be that conversation because I'm just, yeah, I'm messing. And it will be similar. It will be similar. But it comes back to that point you made. It is quite an emotionally immature thing to want to pick the best, isn't it? As you say, just enjoying them both. Yeah. Speaking about another person, I suppose closer to the heart of Liverpool fans that you would have spent a lot of time with in the company up. I was looking back over a season on the brink today when I read it first. It was fascinating to me because I had Raf on such a pedestal. And it was lovely to see different aspects of his character coming through in that book. But I think it kept coming back to this guy who is basically so driven, so driven. And more at home with a tactics board on a training pitch than in front of cameras or dealing with anything else. Is that fair? I mean, he's driven and I think he's one of the best guys at his job. And he knows that. And he gets frustrated when that doesn't get recognized, not by the public, but recognized by the clubs. He doesn't belong to the Zira, unconvinced. If he was English, if he was British and was a coach 20 years ago, he would have been 20 years at a club at Liverpool perhaps. Yeah. And would have got a wrong right, wrong right, but more right and wrong for sure. But right, so remember when he, at that point when he started, I have to read that book again because I'm sure there'll be a little bit of clues of what's happened since then because remember that time he started rotating and people were going like Tinkerman and all that. Yeah. And everybody's rotating now. And when he would just try to create a youth team because he would allow the power and the academy. And because he wanted a youth players to come into the first team, which eventually have kind of prepared the way for some of the guys that have come into the first team now. And again, was seen like he's spending money for nothing. The way he dealt with money, the fact that he almost was like zero money, zero pounds, net, spend the Chinese time at Liverpool. Sure. And that doesn't get recognized. He knows all that and sees that people don't realize and is frustrating. And of course he was doing things at Chelsea straight away you could see it on the page. If you're a bit of a coach, if you're a bit of a football analyst, you see what he was doing as a right. They are in good shape. They are moving well. There's good balance. He was putting all that in. But there was all the shouting and the noise, which didn't allow a lot of people to see what happened. And then they won't think, so then everybody saw them. If he hadn't won things, the job was still the same. Job was still the same. It was an excellent job. And you can see now that Justin Mourinho is struggling to get much more of a side because there's no much more to the side. And Rafa will always, always maximize the potential for any team he's got. But there's people that want to make him look like a fool and he's up to them. If they don't see that talent, don't recognize it. Don't give him the cradle to the chefs. It kind of plays everybody I guess. Sure. Well look, I don't want to take much more of your time, Guillermo. If one or two more quick questions is that's all right. We will go through them really fast. A guy who is probably possibly Rafa's best friend, Gabi Alonso. He's done spectacularly well where he is currently. Rumors will not go away about a possible return to Liverpool. Yet again, yesterday, it was on the go. What's the likelihood of that? Irrespective of the suitability, what's the likelihood of him doing that? It's not going back. It's not going back. You'd be pretty sure about that. Yeah. Okay. He loves Liverpool. And because he loves Liverpool, he's got a difficult to choose his next team. Sure. So, you know, it cannot be Manchester United and so on. I see him as a coach and I see him. If he becomes a coach, he would be a manager of Liverpool at some point. I'm pretty sure about that. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be a very popular thing. Can I finish off with a question that's kind of a topical one? There are a lot of stories going around. I'll just be interested to get you're taken about the EU investigation into rail and bar. So, in relation to state aid and then there's the story between the Neymar funds and all that type of thing. Are these kind of stories damaging for La Liga? Are they maybe a little bit based on what you're thinking about? It's based on the fact that for a long time the football clubs in general have depended too much on the council. And on government money and on government leeway and blind eyes and stuff like that. But football is always real like that in Spain. So, for instance, any local team will have a ground that's owned by the council or will put the budget. The council will put the budget. I tried to buy a club not so long ago. And it was all had to be done via the council. If politically was right for them, if they had the budget to help us, that's how football is done in Spain. So, of course, from an outsider point of view they'll say that's not fair. And I agree with them. It's not fair that some clubs get helped and others they don't. I mean, Barcelona has received throughout the years a lot of help because it's politically good to be close to them. Spaniel, on the other hand, being in the same city, hasn't had the same kind of advantages and eventually has had to leave Barcelona to just be outside to have a stadium. How do you deal with that? It'd be good to see somebody saying, "Okay, let's have a look." And they're going to have a look. Is it damaging? I don't care. It has to be done. It has to be done. It has to be done. You're a very, very good man. Thanks very much. Appreciate your time immensely. Thank you. Thank you. Home sense. Why is it home sense? The prices make sense. Ooh, outdoor is in. Are those plates melamine? Pretty planters. Pillows, lanterns. Pretty much everything outdoor. And the savings. What makes sense to me now? Out, save on outdoor. Find a store at homestense.com. This podcast is brought to you by Progressive. Are you thinking more about how to tighten up your budget these days? Drivers who save by switching to Progressive, save over $700 on average. And customers can qualify for an average of six discounts when they sign up. A little off your rate each month goes a long way. Get a quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. National annual average insurance savings by new customers surveyed in 2020. Potential savings will vary. 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Right a xmas treat to go with our competition. Here is the interview with Guillem Balague on a standalone basis. To win a signed hardback copy of the Messi Autobiography Answer this question to @LiverpoolWays @TheDayTrippers1 with the hashtag #MessiXmas - What ESPN 30 for 30 Documentary inspired Guillem when Trev discusses Messi and Ronaldo? Answers must be in by Dec 30th as we will announce the winner on that nights Podcast.
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