The driver of the Tusa bus went from Badalona to Barcelona and Catalan regional to first divisionstopping everywhere in between. On Thursday night, Atlètic Lleida host Espanyol in the Copa del Rey first round. Lleida play in Spain’s semi-pro fourth tier, a world away from their opponents, who celebrated their 125th anniversary last Saturday by climbing into a Champions League place, but there will be something familiar about the man sitting on the visitors’ bench, if he ever actually sits. “I know Manolo because we’ve faced each other at our level,” Lleida’s coach, Gabri García says. “We come from the depths.”
Depths is right, but Manolo González wouldn’t change a thing, proud to have been in García’s place. A symbol of some dayhe reached the top flight via the long route, having coached at every age group and every level in Spain, from the regional league to thirdwith its 397 teams across 18 groups; from Second Bstill theoretically amateur and made up of four regional divisions with 80 teams, to second; and on to firstno guarantee he would get there. Which is why it took years to give up the day job at the wheel of the long distance that Barcelona.
That fits, part of a story that made him. Just about the first thing the 46-year-old says over the shouts at Espanyol’s training ground, universal soundtrack to every game, is that he’s “a normal bloke”. Spend time with him and he is, a bit too normal for where he is now: funny, honest, direct and entirely unpretentious. Deserving as well: he calls reaching first a “lottery” but if there’s something in that, it’s not entirely true. This is work, talent, perseverance, personality, endless hours and countless lessons along the way, sometimes from unlikely places.
“One day you’re John Travolta, the next you’re Manolo González,” he says. Things can change fast in football and it is meant as a warning – from the most luxurious quiff to not a hair on your head, from strutting star of Saturday Night Fever to someone like me – but that’s not always a bad thing. One day in March last year, he was made manager of Espanyol; 45 years old and almost unknown, living in the same flat he always had, having never coached “professional” football, suddenly overnight there he was. Actually, wait: overnight? How about more than 10,000 of them?
“When you arrive, it’s as if you’ve never been a coach before,” he says. “I think: ‘Hang on, at Ebro, Peña Deportiva, Badalona, I wasn’t a coach?’ Only now? I’ve been coaching a long time.” Thirty years in fact, which is part of why it works, why González is the way he is and has been as successful as he has. Espanyol’s most popular manager for years, this status was found, not forced. It’s not about declaring you’ll reach the top, ambition announced at the outset, he says. “Your task is to make your players better. Then your career, life, will take you where it takes you.”
Born in tiny Folgoso do Courel, Galicia, González’s family took him to Barcelona aged three. His mum ran a restaurant on Calle Valencia and he played football. Nicknamed Stoichkov because, like the Bulgarian, he had a bit of a short fuse, he was good. But not, he says, good enough. Not as good as he could have been, either.
“My ceiling was Second B. Because of my physical condition and my head. I was everything I don’t want in a player. Yes, I was hyper-competitive – I got sent off a lot and when I lost, my mum knew not to talk to me – but I didn’t behave well. Nor did I have someone to advise me. At Martinenc under Paco Sánchez, I learned lessons I shouldn’t as player that were useful as a coach: basically, I did what I wanted. A captain can’t play every week if he doesn’t deserve it, even when he plays well: it’s the wrong message. I’m lucky, no one’s like that here. If I had a me, he wouldn’t play.
“If my head had been better, I would have looked after myself better,” González goes on. “There are good players down there. Abraham at Badalona was spectacular: when he realised, it was too late. It’s about reaching your level, whatever that is, and making it last. Ronaldinho should have marked an era and didn’t, that’s sad. Could I have reached first? I don’t think so. Could I have had a better, longer career? Yes.
“If I could have chosen, I would be a first-division player, not a coach. I would swap. I tell them that. But I had started coaching at 16. I did it because I liked it; I didn’t think I would make it. I had always played but didn’t know how to play. A coach called Antonio Sánchez changed how I saw the game, showed me why. I think it’s because of him that I became a coach. Another important person, especially in handling criticism and pressure, was José Ramón Preciado, who had been at Real Madrid and Espanyol. Still, I saw people like Manolo Márquez or Francisco López coaching [lower down] and thought: ‘How am I going to coach, when people [that talented] are down there?’”
But it started: Martinenc, Sant Gabriel, Badalona. Where it would end, who knew. It might just endand it wasn’t a living yet. It wasn’t until 2018 that González asked the bus company for a leave of absence. “I would get up at five, drive the route, finish my shift at four-ish, train, get home at eight. When I did my coaching badges, I worked nights. People see all this now, but not what’s behind it. I was lucky in Second B later: I could make a living; a lot can’t. Then there’s that moment when, with your family’s support, you have to gamble: ‘I’m going to be a coach.’ Or I’m not, and I’ll have a stable job instead.”
In 2020 his Badalona team, then in Second Bknocked Getafe out of the cup. He took fourth-tier Peña Deportiva to successive playoffs. In July 2023 he joined Espanyol’s B team at the same level, on a salary lower than offered elsewhere in the division. Then, barely a year later, it happened: Espanyol’s first team were in the second division, they had sacked two coaches, Luis García and Luis Miguel Ramis, and the situation was desperate: miss promotion and they would have been “screwed”, González admits.
“For me reaching first was a lottery,” he says. “The right place at the right time. You think: ‘They won’t put me in. How can they put in the bloke from the B team when they have to go up?’ It’s life or death, because it really was life or death. But they asked if I think I’m capable, and I said: ‘Of course.’ The players believed; if not, you’re done.”
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González took charge of 12 games, the only matches he has had in secondand didn’t lose, going up via the playoffs. That, though, didn’t necessarily mean he would go to firstwith them, an emergency in-house solution easily expendable. Even in Second Bhe says, some clubs saw him as a coach for the small grounds.
“Espanyol’s sporting director saw something in me others didn’t. Lots of players and coaches are labelled, even though there’s talent in second and Second B. You fear they might say: This bloke’s not ‘first division’. Public opinion says: ‘He doesn’t know the league, he hasn’t got the experience.’ Put me in first and it doesn’t go well, the sporting director pays. You have to be brave to risk that, assume the consequences. And when results weren’t good in first at first, the players could have easily thought: ‘Young coach, new in the first division, we can let him fall.’ But the opposite happened.”
So here he is, with Espanyol fifth, a renewed optimism about the place. Under new ownership too, Burnley’s Alan Pace taking control. Three decades have passed and it’s different: from managing alone, or a single assistant, to a whole backroom staff, unimaginable resources. From crowds in the hundreds to tens of thousands, visiting the biggest grounds. That moment in a silent, empty stadium before kick-off still gets him. And, yes, the salary too. So, what was it like the first time you saw all those zeros? González laughs. “It’s not as if they were zeros like Mourinho’s! What you think is: ‘Pay off what you can and save some in case one day things aren’t so good.’”
Surely the purity is left behind? There are parts of first that aren’t for him, not his natural place. “We’re normal people trying to do our job and I don’t like the exposure, that we say things and people run with it.” Yet if González doesn’t enjoy the 80-odd press conferences annually, his audience does. His is a welcome arrival, someone to cut through the bullshit, earthy and charismatic with a knack for a memorable line.
Besides, he insists, looking across the grass, ultimately it’s not so different. There’s even a corner routine that is exactly the same as ever. And, he says, grinning, it still works.
“I still get the nerves on Thursdays. The day I don’t, the day I haven’t got that energy – whether it’s because I’m old or I’ve got too much money or whatever – I’ll stop. Winning is a relief because of the pressure – you know many people depend on you. Because this is the first division, it’s not a game, it’s a business, a show. But we try to not lose sight of enjoying this, competing. They’re footballers not farandulosissocialites. And I can tell you something: maybe I’ve been lucky with who I’ve met, but since I’ve been here, it is pure. Committed people who want to work and win, who live it like we did in Second B. I can’t say: ‘This is another world.’ Thankfully, in my experience, it’s not.”
