Its only Ray Parlour
09 Aug 2004, 06:23 AM
Born to play in England
Arsenal's young striker José Antonio Reyes took time to settle at his new club - but now loves it, he tells Guillem Ballague
Sunday August 8, 2004
The Observer
José Antonio Reyes pinches my tape recorder and turns it towards Manuel Almunia, the Spanish goalkeeper. Putting on his interviewer's voice, he asks Arsenal's new signing: 'So, Almunia, to start with, how have your first days at the club been?' Before Reyes sits down to answer a single question, one thing is clear: he is part of the Arsenal family.
Seven months after signing from Seville, Reyes is comfortable with his surroundings. He recognises his role in the side, feels the club is his, and is comfortable with expectations and demands. In the absence of Lauren, the adopted dad of the growing Brazilian-Spanish community at Highbury who was back in London to spend time with his first baby, Reyes moves around with the authority and confidence he used to have at Sevilla. Very impressive for a 20-year-old.
It takes a while to seat him as he casts an eye in every direction, taking in everything going on around the lounge of the Amsterdam Hilton, including the chat Sven-Göran Eriksson is having with Arsčne Wenger. It takes even longer for him to concentrate on the questions.
'You're not going to take long, are you, you *******?' he asks, adding a few post-nine-o'clock-watershed Spanish words. In the friendliest possible way.
The first questions are inevitable: how will Arsenal look without Patrick Vieira, and how have the squad lived through the soap opera of the summer?
'Patrick has not hidden at all. He has faced the music from the beginning, although he has not talked much about it to anybody and did not train. The players have been trying to guess about his future and we know it will be almost impossible to beat a Real Madrid with him. He eats with me at the same table and I wind him up, "You are going to Madrid", and he laughs all the time. He is a man you can speak to anytime, he is so affable. To lose someone like him is a huge blow, but when Madrid want something, they tend to get it.'
Reyes soon switches to automatic and answers questions with almost the same words he used in previous interviews. He speaks in an unusual accent: the Spanish equivalent of a Scouser trying to sound like a BBC presenter. In short sentences, delivered at high speed, he finds enough confidence to face the part of his profession he likes least - explaining himself.
'Each coach has his way of doing things, but training is very similar here and Spain. Surprisingly, the biggest difference is that at Arsenal we use more ball than in Spain. Everything is done with a football and that for a player is very important.
'Joaquin Caparros, my coach at Sevilla, used to speak to us much more, but Wenger is one of those that says little and lets people do the talking on the pitch. There are fewer technical talks, which is great. And the strikers do not have as many defensive obligations as at Sevilla, where we had to go back to our own box sometimes. Wenger prefers us to stay in the opposite half constantly. And that is it. When we are not training, it is the same - we can do whatever we please.'
And what would that be? In Seville, the city with the biggest percentage of bars and season-ticket holders per square metre in the world, he was the hero and villain at the same time. Adored by Sevilla fans, he would be stopped and hassled by rival Betis supporters, so Reyes preferred to spend most of his time at the family home. The house was much bigger than the one he lived in when he was found by Sevilla as a teenager - minimal utilities and water dripping from the roof on the rare days when it rained. His new Seville address is easily recognisable by the huge drawings of his face on one of the walls, along with his old club badge. Someone added an Arsenal one recently.
There are no plans to decorate his new Bedfordshire residence the same way. His mother, father and girlfriend will still live with him for now and those who know him well are aware it could not be any other way. 'I go shopping with my family, we spend time discovering the city. I have been here for six months and I am still learning about my surroundings.'
The new house will be 'more Andalucia than England. We have brought hardly anything from home, but the things we got in England look very Spanish. I used to buy cars, I love cars, but now I prefer to collect properties. It is better to buy houses to have something for the future.' So, finally his mother, the biggest influence in his life, has succeeded in making him realise that the cars, on which he spent his first millions, were just the fulfilment of a teenager's dream.
The rest of the time, he takes his English lessons and plays football on his PlayStation, sometimes until midnight. It has been known for friends to beg him to let them go home. 'You must come soon, I am going to beat you,' he threatens. He mostly watches Spanish television but also likes English music and sport channels.
'I don't buy newspapers, I have a look at the ones players bring to training, as well as magazines on cars, games and computers that fly around in the changing room. Harrods is my favourite shop.'
After the teen-magazine questions, he rests back and becomes the 20-year-old José Antonio again, and the reality of his uneasy settling in London comes out.
'The first few months were awful. I wanted to go home, I was ill because of it. Many people couldn't understand why I left Seville and would tell me how difficult it was going to be to adapt. At first I thought they were right, that I couldn't cope. It has changed now, thank God. I feel protected by the club. Having the family around has helped enormously. Once you are used to it, you can live anywhere,' he says, almost convincingly.
'If you are from the south, even when another club doubles or quadruples your wages, you think about moving a million times. Six or seven players at Arsenal speak Spanish and that has been very useful. But I cannot help but miss the rest of my family - my brother who just got married and especially my grandad. I would love to have him with me, but he has heart troubles and I am scared that the trip will kill him.
'I go to Seville when they give us free days but in the pre-season we are not getting so many.' And, when in Seville, once he has visited his family, he goes to see the other love of his life, the Virgin of Consolation. 'I am a big devotee of Our Lady. I have her everywhere, at home, in London. I pray to her practically every day. I don't ask her anything, I have it all, thank God, so I thank her for her help and support. She has been very kind to me.'
His former club still take some of his time. 'I follow Sevilla by internet and watching Sky. The club have given me everything and I have to know what is going on with them. They helped me as a player but also as a person. If it wasn't for Sevilla I wouldn't be here.'
But, as Rafa Benitez admits when he talks about Liverpool, Reyes soon realised he was making a jump in quality when he was shown the facilities at Arsenal. 'You see it immediately - the training pitches, the changing rooms, new grass every year, the feet don't hurt after training.' Reyes, a clear case of natural raw talent, is also pleasantly surprised by the approach of Wenger. 'He doesn't talk a lot but he feels close. He uses a bit of English and a bit of Spanish. He tells me before a match where I play. During the pre-season he has placed me wide left and second forward and in both positions I have been scoring, I feel good. After that, he knows what we all can offer and doesn't tell me what to do.
'It is stupid to tell a player where he has to run and when - the match decides what you have to do. Anyway, as long as I am in the line-up I don't mind where I play.'
Reyes has never hidden that he prefers to play behind the striker, but Wenger is not worried about his position or in general about moulding his instinct.
'If you tell a player like him what to do,' Wenger says, 'you kill his creativity. The only thing is that it is too risky to let him go too deep, he can lose the ball and find us out of shape. You can see his game has settled after the first months and he looks quicker and stronger since he came back from holidays. His mobility is his main skill and we can definitely use that to our advantage.'
Reyes was not aware he was born for English football until he arrived at Highbury. 'I prefer English football to Spanish. In Spain, the competition is called ' La Liga of the stars' and people talk of players as Galacticos , but it has less pace, less rhythm, it breaks up too often. I love it here, with the constant box-to-box action and even the fair play - nobody demands cards for others.' Using his skills in a different environment has helped Reyes realise how far he has come and how much he still has to learn.
'[Thierry] Henry is, along with Lauren, one of my best friends in the squad. He speaks a bit of Spanish too and I speak a bit of English. I spend lots of time with him and with Vieira. It is fantastic to be so close to Henry, I look at him and learn movements, technical gestures, and attitude. I don't think by a long way we have seen the best of me. I tend to watch carefully Thierry and van Nistelrooy. All forwards have something to learn from those two.'
In the streets of Seville, diehard fans of his old club still talk of what has become an urban myth - the story of Villega, a player the same age as Reyes, but who was even better when they started together. Villega went down the wrong path. 'He was 12 or 13 and was chosen best European player or something like that, he was a fantastic footballer. But the stupid things, too many nights out, too many drinks took him the wrong way. That is why it is important you have the family around and also the will to be someone.'
Reyes became someone in England against Chelsea last season, when he scored two goals and set the standards he has since imposed on himself.
'I will never forget it because I felt nobody knew much about me and it was a way of introducing myself. Now we have to win the league again, it should be the priority, and keep growing after that. We will have another go at the Champions League, although I have no idea why we cannot do better in Europe.
'You know, since we met up after the holidays, we haven't talked about Chelsea or Manchester United at all. We are only interested in ourselves. The best thing in this team is that nobody feels superior, nobody is arrogant, nobody acts as the boss, but also we have a feeling of working for the same cause.'
If the Chelsea fixture was the high since his arrival at Highbury, the low was the strange decision of the Spanish national coach, Ińaki Saez, to choose a centre-back (Juanito) instead of Reyes for Euro 2004. The new man in charge, Luis Aragones, is willing to fight the misconception that if you are Spanish and play abroad it is possibly because you are not good enough.
'I hope it is better with him. I really got very upset, I didn't understand why I didn't go to Portugal.' The good news is that Aragones has already said, off the record, that he will have Reyes in his first line-up for the friendly against Venezuela next week.
Almost three quarters of an hour answering questions about himself is something Reyes would prefer not to have done, but there is one more before he goes to joke with team-mates Cesc Fabregas and Almunia. If he could bring only one thing from Spain, what would that be?
'My grandad,' he says, barely making an effort to hide the melancholy that will accompany his English adventure.
Arsenal's young striker José Antonio Reyes took time to settle at his new club - but now loves it, he tells Guillem Ballague
Sunday August 8, 2004
The Observer
José Antonio Reyes pinches my tape recorder and turns it towards Manuel Almunia, the Spanish goalkeeper. Putting on his interviewer's voice, he asks Arsenal's new signing: 'So, Almunia, to start with, how have your first days at the club been?' Before Reyes sits down to answer a single question, one thing is clear: he is part of the Arsenal family.
Seven months after signing from Seville, Reyes is comfortable with his surroundings. He recognises his role in the side, feels the club is his, and is comfortable with expectations and demands. In the absence of Lauren, the adopted dad of the growing Brazilian-Spanish community at Highbury who was back in London to spend time with his first baby, Reyes moves around with the authority and confidence he used to have at Sevilla. Very impressive for a 20-year-old.
It takes a while to seat him as he casts an eye in every direction, taking in everything going on around the lounge of the Amsterdam Hilton, including the chat Sven-Göran Eriksson is having with Arsčne Wenger. It takes even longer for him to concentrate on the questions.
'You're not going to take long, are you, you *******?' he asks, adding a few post-nine-o'clock-watershed Spanish words. In the friendliest possible way.
The first questions are inevitable: how will Arsenal look without Patrick Vieira, and how have the squad lived through the soap opera of the summer?
'Patrick has not hidden at all. He has faced the music from the beginning, although he has not talked much about it to anybody and did not train. The players have been trying to guess about his future and we know it will be almost impossible to beat a Real Madrid with him. He eats with me at the same table and I wind him up, "You are going to Madrid", and he laughs all the time. He is a man you can speak to anytime, he is so affable. To lose someone like him is a huge blow, but when Madrid want something, they tend to get it.'
Reyes soon switches to automatic and answers questions with almost the same words he used in previous interviews. He speaks in an unusual accent: the Spanish equivalent of a Scouser trying to sound like a BBC presenter. In short sentences, delivered at high speed, he finds enough confidence to face the part of his profession he likes least - explaining himself.
'Each coach has his way of doing things, but training is very similar here and Spain. Surprisingly, the biggest difference is that at Arsenal we use more ball than in Spain. Everything is done with a football and that for a player is very important.
'Joaquin Caparros, my coach at Sevilla, used to speak to us much more, but Wenger is one of those that says little and lets people do the talking on the pitch. There are fewer technical talks, which is great. And the strikers do not have as many defensive obligations as at Sevilla, where we had to go back to our own box sometimes. Wenger prefers us to stay in the opposite half constantly. And that is it. When we are not training, it is the same - we can do whatever we please.'
And what would that be? In Seville, the city with the biggest percentage of bars and season-ticket holders per square metre in the world, he was the hero and villain at the same time. Adored by Sevilla fans, he would be stopped and hassled by rival Betis supporters, so Reyes preferred to spend most of his time at the family home. The house was much bigger than the one he lived in when he was found by Sevilla as a teenager - minimal utilities and water dripping from the roof on the rare days when it rained. His new Seville address is easily recognisable by the huge drawings of his face on one of the walls, along with his old club badge. Someone added an Arsenal one recently.
There are no plans to decorate his new Bedfordshire residence the same way. His mother, father and girlfriend will still live with him for now and those who know him well are aware it could not be any other way. 'I go shopping with my family, we spend time discovering the city. I have been here for six months and I am still learning about my surroundings.'
The new house will be 'more Andalucia than England. We have brought hardly anything from home, but the things we got in England look very Spanish. I used to buy cars, I love cars, but now I prefer to collect properties. It is better to buy houses to have something for the future.' So, finally his mother, the biggest influence in his life, has succeeded in making him realise that the cars, on which he spent his first millions, were just the fulfilment of a teenager's dream.
The rest of the time, he takes his English lessons and plays football on his PlayStation, sometimes until midnight. It has been known for friends to beg him to let them go home. 'You must come soon, I am going to beat you,' he threatens. He mostly watches Spanish television but also likes English music and sport channels.
'I don't buy newspapers, I have a look at the ones players bring to training, as well as magazines on cars, games and computers that fly around in the changing room. Harrods is my favourite shop.'
After the teen-magazine questions, he rests back and becomes the 20-year-old José Antonio again, and the reality of his uneasy settling in London comes out.
'The first few months were awful. I wanted to go home, I was ill because of it. Many people couldn't understand why I left Seville and would tell me how difficult it was going to be to adapt. At first I thought they were right, that I couldn't cope. It has changed now, thank God. I feel protected by the club. Having the family around has helped enormously. Once you are used to it, you can live anywhere,' he says, almost convincingly.
'If you are from the south, even when another club doubles or quadruples your wages, you think about moving a million times. Six or seven players at Arsenal speak Spanish and that has been very useful. But I cannot help but miss the rest of my family - my brother who just got married and especially my grandad. I would love to have him with me, but he has heart troubles and I am scared that the trip will kill him.
'I go to Seville when they give us free days but in the pre-season we are not getting so many.' And, when in Seville, once he has visited his family, he goes to see the other love of his life, the Virgin of Consolation. 'I am a big devotee of Our Lady. I have her everywhere, at home, in London. I pray to her practically every day. I don't ask her anything, I have it all, thank God, so I thank her for her help and support. She has been very kind to me.'
His former club still take some of his time. 'I follow Sevilla by internet and watching Sky. The club have given me everything and I have to know what is going on with them. They helped me as a player but also as a person. If it wasn't for Sevilla I wouldn't be here.'
But, as Rafa Benitez admits when he talks about Liverpool, Reyes soon realised he was making a jump in quality when he was shown the facilities at Arsenal. 'You see it immediately - the training pitches, the changing rooms, new grass every year, the feet don't hurt after training.' Reyes, a clear case of natural raw talent, is also pleasantly surprised by the approach of Wenger. 'He doesn't talk a lot but he feels close. He uses a bit of English and a bit of Spanish. He tells me before a match where I play. During the pre-season he has placed me wide left and second forward and in both positions I have been scoring, I feel good. After that, he knows what we all can offer and doesn't tell me what to do.
'It is stupid to tell a player where he has to run and when - the match decides what you have to do. Anyway, as long as I am in the line-up I don't mind where I play.'
Reyes has never hidden that he prefers to play behind the striker, but Wenger is not worried about his position or in general about moulding his instinct.
'If you tell a player like him what to do,' Wenger says, 'you kill his creativity. The only thing is that it is too risky to let him go too deep, he can lose the ball and find us out of shape. You can see his game has settled after the first months and he looks quicker and stronger since he came back from holidays. His mobility is his main skill and we can definitely use that to our advantage.'
Reyes was not aware he was born for English football until he arrived at Highbury. 'I prefer English football to Spanish. In Spain, the competition is called ' La Liga of the stars' and people talk of players as Galacticos , but it has less pace, less rhythm, it breaks up too often. I love it here, with the constant box-to-box action and even the fair play - nobody demands cards for others.' Using his skills in a different environment has helped Reyes realise how far he has come and how much he still has to learn.
'[Thierry] Henry is, along with Lauren, one of my best friends in the squad. He speaks a bit of Spanish too and I speak a bit of English. I spend lots of time with him and with Vieira. It is fantastic to be so close to Henry, I look at him and learn movements, technical gestures, and attitude. I don't think by a long way we have seen the best of me. I tend to watch carefully Thierry and van Nistelrooy. All forwards have something to learn from those two.'
In the streets of Seville, diehard fans of his old club still talk of what has become an urban myth - the story of Villega, a player the same age as Reyes, but who was even better when they started together. Villega went down the wrong path. 'He was 12 or 13 and was chosen best European player or something like that, he was a fantastic footballer. But the stupid things, too many nights out, too many drinks took him the wrong way. That is why it is important you have the family around and also the will to be someone.'
Reyes became someone in England against Chelsea last season, when he scored two goals and set the standards he has since imposed on himself.
'I will never forget it because I felt nobody knew much about me and it was a way of introducing myself. Now we have to win the league again, it should be the priority, and keep growing after that. We will have another go at the Champions League, although I have no idea why we cannot do better in Europe.
'You know, since we met up after the holidays, we haven't talked about Chelsea or Manchester United at all. We are only interested in ourselves. The best thing in this team is that nobody feels superior, nobody is arrogant, nobody acts as the boss, but also we have a feeling of working for the same cause.'
If the Chelsea fixture was the high since his arrival at Highbury, the low was the strange decision of the Spanish national coach, Ińaki Saez, to choose a centre-back (Juanito) instead of Reyes for Euro 2004. The new man in charge, Luis Aragones, is willing to fight the misconception that if you are Spanish and play abroad it is possibly because you are not good enough.
'I hope it is better with him. I really got very upset, I didn't understand why I didn't go to Portugal.' The good news is that Aragones has already said, off the record, that he will have Reyes in his first line-up for the friendly against Venezuela next week.
Almost three quarters of an hour answering questions about himself is something Reyes would prefer not to have done, but there is one more before he goes to joke with team-mates Cesc Fabregas and Almunia. If he could bring only one thing from Spain, what would that be?
'My grandad,' he says, barely making an effort to hide the melancholy that will accompany his English adventure.