Ramos and Iniesta, made of tough stuff

Posted Saturday, November 21, 2015 by Marca.com

The photo of the two 'Clásico' captains brings together two veterans of a past generation of footballers brought up skinning their knees on dirt pitches.

Ramos and Iniesta belong to an endangered species doomed to extinction.

Mud, cold and an FT-5 - for those who have experienced it, there is no more terrifying combination. The sound of the ball after a strike and its trajectory as it hurtles towards your face, a sight played out in slow motion in the mind of the victim. Although the mark it left stuck around significantly longer - the time it took for the triangle-shaped imprints to disappear.

But how is it possible that a generation of incredible players, the inventors of tiki-taka, emerged from a time when balls like those were used on pitches like those? Pablo Blanco was the man responsible for discovering Sergio Ramos. The current 'Los Blancos' captain was playing at Camas before trying out for Sevilla. "Sergio was playing on dirt in Camas. We were too. It was hard to find synthetic grass fields back then. He was very young, an 'Alevin'. He was blond, tall, strong and played up front rather than in defence. He made a good impression because he had a strong physique. He was very self-confident, very sparky", he recalls.

Catali, one of Iniesta's Albacete coaches, spotted his quality in controlling the ball despite the challenges presented by the pitch. "It was a dirt field, one of the hard ones, with gravel and everything. You could see he was a phenomenon, he controlled the ball around there even at just nine years old", he said.

"My top piece of advice was that they should look up from the ball, and Andrés did that automatically. He looked to both sides to see if there was anyone coming at him. Bar?a saw him and snapped him up because he was fantastic".