Before starting this Friday’s press conference prior to the Osasuna – Valladolid football match, Osasuna’s coach, Vicente Moreno, wanted to say a few words on the sidelines of the match. “Then we talk about football whatever you want,” Moreno began. “I just wanted to…” he said, and couldn’t help but break down.
Vicente Moreno, as he himself said at the press conference, is from Massanassa, one of the municipalities most affected by DANA in Valencia. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” the football coach managed to say while trying to hold back tears. “Forgive me,” he resumed, “I wanted to send all my encouragement and solidarity to all the people who have been affected by this disaster…” Moreno said with tears in his eyes. “To all the people who have lost loved ones… you are going to allow me to have a few words especially towards my land, towards Valencia, to all the Valencians and to all those who live in Valencia, who live in the Horta Sud region, among which is my town, Massanassa”, one of those most affected by DANA, which has already claimed the lives of more than 200 people in the province of Valencia alone.
“It is very hard especially for them, but for those of us who are far away and have families, friends, neighbors, children there, you have to understand that it is being very hard,” Montero lamented through tears. “It’s been very hard not being able to be there with them,” he acknowledged. “I simply wanted to send a message of strength. We are hard-working people, tough people, and although it seems difficult now, we will all get out of this together,” he added, ending with: “Excuse me.”
Although Moreno had advanced, at the beginning of the press conference, that they would later talk about football, the journalists present in the room did not overlook the burden of the moment, and asked Moreno about his situation and that of his people. “It is being very difficult for me,” the man reiterated; “That is chaos, right now we don’t know how we can help,” he commented.
“I have had the misfortune of being from a town that is exactly where all the worst things have happened,” Moreno said. “It has been difficult for me to think [en el fútbol]”Maybe I haven’t been as focused as I should have been,” he confessed.
“There are more important things in life than football”
When a journalist asked him if this weekend’s league match should have been suspended, the coach confessed: “Possibly yes.” “We are not aware, no one is aware of what is happening there. I am in constant contact with my children and it is chaos. It is a chaos that we cannot imagine,” Moreno stressed.
“Evidently, there are more important things in life than football, without a doubt,” he reflected. “Maybe football helps people get distracted, I don’t know, but I can assure you that I’m looking forward to being there” in Valencia, the Osasuna coach said again.
As much as you try to have the pose of being strong and professional, it is very difficult. And you don’t know if it’s worth it.
Vicente Moreno
Vicente Moreno has said, again when asked by reporters, that he has had a “bad” time these days of catastrophe in his country. “I was lucky to know that my children were at home, my family was at home, but after 10 at night we lost communication, there was no possibility of communication with anyone. One was watching the news, I was listening to the radio all night, I couldn’t talk to them until one in the afternoon the next day,” he explained.
Moreno recalled that “the alarm [que envió la Generalitat a los móviles] “It rang at eight in the afternoon,” but “at six-thirty the ravine” in his town had already overflowed. “At 8 p.m. many people had already drowned,” he lamented. “You try, sometimes in the wrong way, to be professional, to pay attention to the game. But no matter how much you try to have the pose of being strong and professional, it is very difficult. And you don’t know if it’s worth it,” the man acknowledged.
Vicente Moreno’s press conference can be seen here:
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