Liverpool legend talks memories of Istanbul, learning magic and his adventures in Malaysia with Johor Darul Ta’zim
L
uis García was “super cool”, he says. That, at least, was the plan, but things have a habit of working out differently. When the former Atlético Madrid, Barcelona and Liverpool player retired in 2016, it was the second time: he walked out of the game in 2014 and walked back in again six months later. But this time, he wasn’t going to be affected. All that suffering and satisfaction, the pressure, the emotion: that was no more.
“I was always very competitive and once I had left football, I thought I wasn’t going to have those feelings I had before,” he says. “I still enjoy football, still play seven-a-side with my friends – every Saturday at 10am, Los Jareños Club de Futbol – but I thought I had lost that and it wasn’t coming back. In fact, I was trying to avoid it; I didn’t want it. So when it happened, it surprised me. I didn’t expect football to give me that again. But there I was, crying.”
It was mid-February in Iskandar Puteri, Malaysia, and the players García was watching celebrating a historic win were his, the feeling shared. “When I saw them jumping with joy, having been with them every day, sharing the long journeys, from Malaysia to Vietnam and back, on to Japan, and then saw them win I got that emotion again.” For the first time in their history, the Malaysian club Johor Darul Ta’zim had reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Champions League, defeating Sanfrecce Hiroshima 3-2 on aggregate. On Friday, they face Al-Ahli or Al-Duhail in Jeddah. García will be with them. He is their chief executive.
