podcast, he said: ” I was twenty years old and (David) Villa was an idol in Valencia. Emery told me, ‘Come join the first team.’ <\/span><\/p>\n“I had other offers from the second and first divisions, but Emery insisted a lot. I did preseason, it went well, and although I went a while without playing, in a Europa League match against Werder Bremen, we were down to ten men. I was warming up at halftime and the fitness coach, Pako Ayestaran, told me, ‘You’re going in,’ and I said, ‘Great,’ and then he said, ‘At full-back.’ So, for me it was a moment of not knowing what to do, it was a new position for me.<\/span><\/p>\n“At first, I didn’t take it very well; when you’re a kid you make mistakes. What I didn’t know was that Emery He was doing me a favor for the entire career I’ve had. Without that change of position, I wouldn’t have had the career I had. I started playing, I was heavily criticized, but Emery continued to believe in me, and I’m still grateful to him for that today. And we remember because in the training sessions before, when I was trying out, I didn’t want to play as a full-back. And I didn’t take it very well. Thanks to Emery, I’ve had the career I’ve had. He’s one of the best coaches in the world, without a doubt.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Barcelona defender believes the decision laid the foundations for the success that followed, including major honours at club…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}