Informe Robinson: Campeones del Mundo – the translation, part I

Well, it appears that an overwhelming number of you wanted a translation of the Informe Robinson Christmas special on our world champions, and luckily readers Michelle and Jennifer came to the rescue (they’ve helped me out before with translations, Michelle here and here, and Jennifer here).  So, here is the first part of the translation of the program; be sure to express your gratitude to Michelle and Jennifer, not only for their work, but also for freeing me up to work on El mundo en nuestras manos (and gifs!).

Michael Robinson: Hello, and welcome to Informe Robinson. Today we have a one-of-a-kind program for you. We invite you to experience the adventures of the champions of the world and how they wrote the most beautiful chapter in the annals of Spanish footballing history. But their fight for the World Cup began long before their arrival in South Africa. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can take the first steps onto the path to glory….

***

Andrés Iniesta: People aren’t aware of the rough times I went through that year.

Narrator: One year before the World Cup, Andrés Iniesta hit rock bottom. A lengthy hamstring injury had filled him with doubt about everything. And the death of his friend, Espanyol footballer Dani Jarque, was a severe emotional blow.

Victor Valdés: On a personal level, he went through some very tough times, with the loss of a great friend like Jarque; on a psychological level, nothing was going well for him that year, and he went through a severe crisis…

N: After more than 100 days on the sideline, Iniesta discovered upon his return that something had changed inside him.

AI: I think I had lost confidence in the way I played, and in my other attributes too…

N: His anxieties continued to grow as he struggled to hit regain top form.

AI: We had in our minds a picture of the Andrés Iniesta who could play at a… reasonably high level, and the inability to reach that level… well, it cast a shadow on things, no?

***

N: Two physiotherapists accompanied Andrés Iniesta on his journey. Emili Ricart has been one of Iniesta’s guardian angels since his arrival in 2008 under Guardiola.

Emili Ricart: It wasn’t easy for him to understand, because he was beginning to ask himself, why am I injured now? I never used to get injured before. Starting from there, we continued to explore how he was feeling in training, at home, with his partner, with his friends… but if none of that had changed, something still didn’t fit in the puzzle for us to be able to explain his performance.

N: Raúl Martínez, the physiotherapist of the Spanish national team, contributed another piece that would help to unlock the puzzle of Iniesta.

Raúl Martínez: Really, this all began because Andrés had gone through his entire life – and this happens a lot with elite athletes – there are some people who have spent 15-20 years of their lives exercising every day – every single day – and they’ve never been injured.

N: Between December and March 2010, Iniesta succumbed to injury two more times.

RM: And that created a dynamic that put him into a bad place mentally.

***

N: The Spanish national team also kept an eye on Iniesta’s evolution.

MR: Were you aware of the bad time that Andrés was having?

Vicente del Bosque: Muscular injuries can wreak havoc on your mental state; they often mean that you can’t play even though you feel fine.

VV: The toughest day for Andrés, and by extension for me too, was a training session near the end of the season…

N: Two months before the World Cup was to begin, Iniesta tore his right hamstring during a closed training session. It was his fourth injury within a year.

VV: I saw how he walked to the corner of the pitch, crying, with Emili Ricart…

AI: That day… killed me. It really was one of the worst days of my life.

VV: We all tried to help console him, but I could tell it was impossible.

AI: That day I’d torn my hamstring, but it felt more like I’d torn my soul. I remember that I left training alone, crying nonstop…

ER: A deep depression… it seemed that we were going to restart the vicious cycle, trapped in a situation with no way out.

Óscar Celada (Spanish national team doctor): Before the final squad list for the World Cup was released, Andrés was one of the players with serious injury issues that we needed to make a decision about.

***

N: On April 18, Fernando Torres underwent meniscus surgery in Barcelona. The man who scored the goal that brought Spain the 2008 Eurocopa was now another major uncertainty on the list of the national team coach.

MR: Did you ever consider not including Fernando?

VDB: Well, that was really up to him and his doctors…

Juan Cota (Spanish national team doctor): When we heard that Fernando would need to undergo a second surgery on his lateral meniscus… it honestly gave us serious doubts about whether he could or couldn’t make it to the World Cup.

Fernando Torres: I told the doctors, I want to play in the World Cup, just remove half or even all of the meniscus if you need to, I don’t care if it shortens my football career by three or four years. For me, the most important thing at the time was to play in the World Cup.

JC: It was as important to him as his own life, I think, at that moment.

FT: I could only think as far ahead as this World Cup, not about anything that might come after that.

JC: We needed to do whatever we could to ensure he made it there.

FT: We had to skip some steps, and they knew it wasn’t their best work, but they understood that I just wanted to make it.

JC: It was a continuous fight against the clock…

FT: I wanted to be there, I wanted to play; I knew Spain could win.

***

N: On May 24, the 23 players chosen by Vicente del Bosque arrived for the first day of the World Cup training camp. Fernando Torres and Andrés Iniesta were among them, despite the doubts surrounding their fitness.

OC: In the end we decided to include him in the squad, but we continued to constantly fear a relapse of the old injury.

AI: The season had gone so poorly for me that the World Cup had become the great dream, the major objective, that would help me free myself and feel like a true footballer again, happy once more.

ER: In those difficult times, we made him a DVD that he could take with him and watch…

AI: People might think that I’m crazy, but… yeah. I went and picked it up on the day off we had before leaving for South Africa.

ER: It was one more method of emotional reinforcement to bring out the best in him.

***

N: The team would spent 50 days together, in a country that they would never forget.

Iker Casillas, Reina, and Victor Valdés. Arbeloa, Albiol, Capdevila, Puyol, Piqué, Marchena, and Sergio Ramos. Fàbregas, Alonso, Sergio Busquets, Iniesta, Xavi Hernández, Javi Martínez, David Silva, Mata, Llorente, Navas, Pedro, Fernando Torres, and David Villa.

***

Pepe Reina: We were all there, the 23 of us. It was a shame that the only controversy there was was about the goalkeepers. But I’ll tell you something: in the 50 days we were all together, there wasn’t a single day where we had any problems. Not a single day. At any rate, the beginning of the tournament… it’s better not to talk about it…

N: The day before Spain’s first match against Switzerland, Iniesta watched Emili Ricart’s DVD for the first time.

ER: The only thing I was trying for was to show him great sportsmen who have also experienced moments of defeat, but who later, after believing in themselves, went on to achieve great success.

N: Every night before going to bed, until his last day in South Africa, Iniesta would re-watch these scenes that had figured prominently in the careers of the likes of (Roger) Federer,  (Fernando) Alonso or (Manuel) Estiarte, mixed in with scenes from his own career.