They compete to be starters in Espanyol’s goal, but that battle has not prevented them from being good friends. Joan García and Fernando Pacheco are the hands of the team that receives the most shots on goal in the League, but not the one that concedes the most. Now it is García who is the starter, something that Pacheco, much more experienced, assumes with sportsmanship. Together they help each other to be better, to grow in a key position for the team, with the common goal that the club can continue in First Division next season. Both serve The Vanguard at a Rinat promotional event held at the Fútbol Emotion store on Diagonal Mar.
“Our relationship was very good from the beginning,” confesses Pacheco, who understands that the goalkeeper position “is very special because only one player plays and it is important when you accumulate experience to see both sides.” The Madrid goalkeeper has been a starter throughout his entire career until last year when Joan García was chosen by the coaches. “When I arrived and saw a boy like Joan, with the enthusiasm he has, how he trains, how he supports you… I knew this could happen, it is the law of life. When you see a talent like him, it is logical that these types of things happen. You only have to support him in the same way that he has supported you,” he acknowledges proudly.
When you see a talent like Joan, all you have to do is support him like he did with me.”
For Joan García, the presence of a goalkeeper like Pacheco by his side is “very important.” “He gives me a lot, not just the technical or tactical things of a goalkeeper himself. But more in situations that I may find myself in or how to work on them.” Last season, the young goalkeeper faced continued ownership in the first team for the first time. “He told me that situations that are happening to me were going to happen to me. He knows what I’m thinking at all times. And it gives me a lot of security to know that someone understands me and knows what I’m thinking. Even if I don’t ask him, he also helps me,” he confesses.
Together they handle the loneliness of the goal in a different way, although the nerves go internally, as Pacheco assures. “Everyone has their own way of dealing with it. It depends on the personality. I have had very nervous colleagues but I have always been quite calm. “That’s how I am in my personal life,” he explains. Although he does not hide that in such a demanding position “you always suffer. The goalkeeper has to live with it. We know that every slightest mistake will condemn us. But it is the position we choose and for better and worse it is what we like,” he says with satisfaction.
The team is very committed to Manolo González and his staff. And I see him with great desire and enthusiasm.”
Great goalkeepers have passed through Espanyol throughout its history, from Zamora to Urruti to Tommy N’Kono and Diego López. For García, this does not mean more pressure but rather “it is a mirror in which to look at oneself,” he says. “I have agreed with Diego López and with Tommy as a coach. More than pressure it is a mirror and I have always tried to absorb everything I can from them. What they convey to you about what the club is and what the Espanyol goal means,” he says.
This end of 2024 has been a complex stretch for a team “that is going to be fighting not to be relegated,” Pacheco acknowledges, and also “this year the league is going to be complicated because I think it will be one of the years in which the most points are needed to achieve salvation,” he says.
Meanwhile, both agree that the squad’s confidence in Manolo González does not allow discussion. “I see the team very committed to him and his staff. And I see him with great desire and enthusiasm. He is a coach who feels for the club,” says García. While Pacheco points out “unity” as “the way forward.” “We have to trust the work of a staff that is doing very well. Knowing that there are difficulties and that there will be hard moments, but we get out of those moments by being united,” he concludes.
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