Now streaming on Twitch: Luis Enrique, the most interesting coach at the World Cup
At the World Cup, most coaches avoid the public eye at all costs. Luis Enrique embraces it
AL-RAYAN, Qatar – There was a brief pause, surely because FIFA’s Spanish-to-English translator was weighing how best to interpret for mixed company the vulgar term Luis Enrique had just applied to himself in the midst of the Spanish national team’s official press conference.
The translator went with “stupid,” though Spanish-based media made clear that the coach’s wry word choice, “gilipollas,” is quite a bit stronger than that – more like “a––––––” or “idiot.”
“You might find it interesting that I do so much better when I’m managing problems, I’m that much of a gilipollas,” he said, prompting laughter among the journalists present. “Don’t laugh. I feel more at ease when I’m in the face of adversity, when I have to lift the mood of my players, to bring everything you’ve got inside, make the most of my roots and my origins.
“As a coach I’ve had very successful moments, but when I perform at my best, it’s when I’m in the face of adversity and hardship. These couple of weeks have gone so well. But my essence, when I give my best, is against hardship.”
Just another entertaining moment in the life of perhaps the most interesting coach at Qatar 2022.
Over the past week, Spain’s manager has also posted topless thirst traps on his Instagram, joked about pregnancy scares from the star attacker on his team, Ferran Torres, who’s dating his daughter, Sira Martinez, and drawn hundreds of thousands of viewers to his regular Twitch livestreams.
There, among other things, he’s discussed orgies and the sex lives of himself and his players, and mocked himself as “an old geezer who doesn’t know how to work the Bluetooth on his headphones,” despite the rather obvious fact that he’s one of the most technology-savvy coaches in the game.
Luis Enrique allows his players to ride electric scooters to and from training rather than pack in and out of a cramped team bus, for example, and uses wireless microphones attached to GPS monitor vests to communicate with his players during training while stationed up in towers to give himself a tactical viewpoint.
All this makes the former Real Madrid and Barcelona midfielder fairly revolutionary given the cautious, defensive norms of his profession, especially at this event, where the pressures are enormous and his colleagues usually regard the public eye as a dangerous intrusion that could reveal secrets and wreck their carefully-constructed plans.
Luis Enrique isn’t breaking injury news or giving away his starting XIs ahead of time, and he’s clearly not lost any of the intensity he’s famous for both as a player and manager. But he does use Twitch — something he began just ahead of the World Cup, cheekily announcing, “streamers of the world, get out of the way! I’m heading downhill and I’ve got no brakes!” — to field questions from fans and offer glimpses inside Spain’s daily routine in Qatar.
He’s not ducking the hot topics, either: One viewer asked him about his players having sex at the tournament, which is not an irrelevant matter, considering that some World Cup coaches over the years have banned their squads from indulging, occasionally even keeping their romantic partners away from their camps.
“It’s something I consider totally normal,” said Luis Enrique. “I mean, if you’re at an orgy the night before a match, it’s not ideal. But hey. With the clubs, they are at home and I have zero worries if they do it or not. If they do it, it is because it is going well for them.
“With common sense, each one with their own wife or with whomever he wants.”
Some might see this as a bit too much information, especially in an environment where even the slightest derivation from the norm can draw intense scrutiny. Some pundits and even other teams’ coaches, for example, suggested that the German national team’s covered-mouths gesture in protest of FIFA and Qatari censorship before their match against Japan had some effect on the final result, a 2-1 upset win for the Samurai Blue.
But the Spanish seem to be bought in on their coach’s way of working. In fact, their players themselves are often among those six-figure Twitch audiences.
“We enjoy, like the most part of the people who are watching this,” said midfielder Dani Olmo on Saturday. “I think he has hundreds of thousands of viewers, spectators. Yeah, It’s funny, but you also learn, because he’s talking about everything, but also every meeting, every speech he has with us, you learn something.
“So it will be good also for the people, for our fans who are following us, so they can see how he is more personally. So it’s good.”
