It is impossible to add the kilometers that Lucas Pérez (36 years) accumulates in the suitcase. Because in its long and peculiar football career he has played in five Spanish regions and four nations in Europe. Has traveled the country and the continent from end to end, … Nothing extraordinary in his profession if it were not for a detail closely related to mobility: he is afraid of flying.
Last Friday Lucas arrived in Eidhoven, a distant Dutch city 1,700 kilometers by road from Madrid, where the Galician player resided since a month ago he said goodbye to Deportivo for “personal reasons.”
The striker faces a new sports challenge in a championship, the Dutch, who still did not know. Before, in addition to doing it in the club of his city, La Coruña, he had dressed the Alavés shirts, Rayo Vallecano, Paok de Salaónica, Arsenal, West Ham United, Elche and Cádiz. In that list are missing their Ukrainian experiences, precisely the origin of their panic to the planes. Or so they say, because Pérez does not usually talk about it.
It is a story that starts in Vitoria, where he caught the arrival of Dmitry Piterman. After buying Alavés, the relieved Ukrainian businessman fleeing and leaving numerous debts. Among them, salaries and premiums that owed the players. After a scale in his Galician land, Lucas towards Rayo Vallecano, then owned by Rumasa – company of another peculiar businessman, José María Ruiz Mateos – and chaired by his wife, the no less peculiar Teresa Rivero.
The attacker arrived in the last and convulsive stage of the Ruiz Mateos mandate, so there were also economic problems and in January 2011 he decided to emigrate for the first time outside of Spain. His contract expired in June, but the ray let Ukraine go after negotiating a range of possible compensation if he reached different objectives – the league or classification for the Champions League or the Europa League – with the Destination Club, the Karpaty Lviv.
As its name suggests, Karpaty is a professional team in the city of Lviv (Lepolis), located in the Montes Cárpatos. A place where neither communications nor professional and personal life were easy for the Spanish footballer.
Lucas’s childhood friends told ‘La Voz de Galicia’ their impressions in the first visit they made to Ukraine: «We arrived in a propeller plane … with the donkey carrying the suitcases. A donkey took out his bags and pulled them! Not the electric tape, a donkey! And there were tanks, and all full of military in uniform … ‘Where are we like?’
The Coruña striker endured two years in Lviv, but had a bad time. Very badly. Nor did he charge regularly, teammates did not fully accept foreign players and then there were the journeys in those planes, many of them with propeller propulsion and not too much stability in the air.
His numerous later trips, the result of his signings for the kyiv Dynamo, the Greek Paak and the two London clubs (Arsenal and West Ham) either did they either helped. It was in those years, after living some film experiences inside an aircraft, when he decided to avoid as much as he stepped on an airport.
And he hasn’t done it. In his acclaimed he returned home, to Deportivo, he has lived several curious situations due to that phobia. Sometimes, journalists from some distant province of Galicia went to the hotel where the Coruña team was staying the day before the game to interview Lucas. When the Galician expedition arrived, Pérez was not. His teammates had traveled by plane, but he did it by car.
It is impossible to the Canary Islands from the Peninsula, so on December 7, in the 90th minute of the Sports-Zaragoza meeting, Lucas Pérez began to protest in front of the referee as insistently as incomprehensible. There was no reason for it. Or yes. The sports striker had already seen four yellow cards in the 26 days of second played. That is, if they showed him the fifth should meet sanction and, things of the calendar, the following week the Coruña team had to play in Tenerife. The referee had to admonish him. Lucas did not fly. And less bad. The team did, but the game was suspended by weather inclement, so Deportivo returned. And he had to travel to the Canary Islands on January 29, another round trip, to play the postponed match. Pérez was no longer part of the squad.
Last Friday, Lucas got up early. He climbed into his vehicle and, after more than 14 hours of highway, arrived late in the afternoon to Eindhoven. He rested at the hotel, on Saturday he spent the medical examination and Sunday was officially presented as the new PSV player.
Of course, his new club had offered him the pertinent plane tickets for displacement. The Spanish footballer resigned. Dutch leaders surely did not surprise them much. One of the historical figures of orange football, Dennis Bergkamp, was worldwide famous for his panic to fly. The midfielder lived an infernal trip with the Holland selection when they went to the 1994 World Cup in the United States. There was a bomb threat before taking off and then, already in the air, they suffered a free fall for several seconds. He didn’t fly again.
Lucas Pérez has landed in a small country – 5,500 km2 – where the displacements are short. The PSV will have to go to London to play the return of the round of 16 of the Champions League, but the Spanish striker is not registered. One less problem.
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