Barça B - Iago: "I had seven great years at Barça"

Former Barcelona Atlètic and current Juventus player Iago Falqué gave an interview to Madrid sports tabloid As.





First of all: you were to travel to Bergamo with the first team this weekend, but in the end you played with the second team. What happened?
Well, Maladoni, the coach of the second team, asked Ranieri not to take me with him because he needed me. So I played with the second team against Siena.

You were angry, of course.
There's time! The boss is the boss... Now I'm playing with the second team and last weekend's would have been my fourth call-up with the first team.

The calcio: that's like doing a football master, boy.
I know what I came here for and what I could expect. Until now, the hardest thing has been my mobile phone bill. I paid one thousand euro a month! Now I'm having an Italian one, the Spanish one was ruining me.

You're living in Turin with your grandfather.
He came with me because it's not easy to go from one country to another. I left home when I was 10 years old, but that was just going to Barcelona. Living abroad is different. That's why he came with me, so that everything would be more comfortable for me. He goes shopping, does my laundry... My grandfather Carlos is a phenomenon!

What about the food?
A lot of pasta, a lot of pizza... We're adapting but it's true that nothing can match the Spanish kitchen. Leaving Vigo was even harder, but at least I ended up at Barça. For me, who was coming from Cristo de la Victoria, a very modest local club, that was a dream.

You didn't stay in La Masía.
No, not at all. My parents didn't want me to go to Barcelona so they were asking Barça a lot of things, hoping they would say no... But they agreed. They asked an apartment, a job for my father, my mother being able to visit us every weekend... It was immense, but they accepted everything. I had seven great years in Barcelona.

Until the day that Luis Enrique told you that he didn't really saw a place for you in Barça B.
Yes. He told me that he thought it would be better if I played with the Juvenil A, that he didn't plan to count on me and that I would have few minutes if I stayed with the B-team. A couple of weeks after that talk, he surprised me by saying that everything was ok, that there wouldn't be a problem if I wanted to stay with his team. But I wasn't motivated anymore. If they don't count on you from the start...

And if above that Juventus is interested...
They saw me last summer at an under-19 tournament in Ireland. With eleven days left before the end of the transfer market, Claudio Ranieri called my father and said he wanted me to join Juventus. You can imagine that I felt like I was dreaming.

What did they pay for you?
Nothing. They signed some agreements with Barça based on incintives: if I play in the Champions League, if I play fifteen games with the first team... Barcelona can receive a maximum of 2,5 million euro°. It was a good thing that I was represented by IMG, that also acts as agent of people like Rafa Nadal or Kun Agüero... Cause you know, in the world of footall there are some lies and therefore it's a good thing to have capable advisors, certainly when you're young.

This was the first part of this interview. You can read the second part in the coming days with Iago talking -among other things- about football in Italy.


Read more:
Barça B: Iago talks about exit
Barça B - Official: Iago to Juventus
Barça B: Manchester United offer for Iago