Javier Torralba (Barcelona, 44 years old) is a few hours away from experiencing an unusual pirouette: making his debut in the Women's League and doing so with the label of great favorite. This is what it takes to replace Rubén Burgos, the coach who won 11 titles with Valencia Basket, the champion in the last four editions of a competition that starts this Saturday with very reinforced teams. “It is going to be the most even League in recent years,” says Torralba, who leaves behind the Segle XXI, a training team in which he was the teacher of players like Elena Buenavida, Maite Cazorla, Helena Pueyo, Paula Ginzo, Laura Gil, Andrea Vilaró or Iyana Martín herself, the sensation of the last World Cup.
Q. You come from the 21st century, created for the Barcelona '92 Games. It is surprising that it is maintained four decades later.
A. What surprises me is that there is only one. France has one with five locations. In Spain we should have four more.
P. Buenavida, Pueyo, Suárez, Iyana, Ginzo passed through your hands... Now you are reunited in Valencia with the first three. Have they changed much?
A. I have to see Marta Suárez after her tour of the United States. She was already very Yankee in personality and we will see how she has returned. She is an extraordinarily intelligent girl and, like all intelligent ones, she challenges you. That generated some conflicts, but they enriched the relationship. Buenavida is more mature. I trained her for four years, something unusual. She is still stubborn, hard-working and very competitive. His character was seen in the Super Cup. Elena was overexcited about not giving up and I think part of it was because she felt like she couldn't let me down in the first few days. I am very grateful to him for that. And Pueyo is a person who was very introverted with his elders and here we have been able to have deeper conversations, about personal things that had not been easy. She is more confident now, but I think she has the talent to shine more.
Q. Did you already see that Iyana was going to be so special?
A. We knew it was special. I see the first Euroleague game he plays with Perfumerías and he has a bad time. After a month he no longer has a bad time. And after two months it's already good. That ability she has to overcome is one of the details that most characterize her. People who only watch her play don't understand it. The people who see her train, yes.
Q. On Wednesday Iyana Martín and Spar Girona said goodbye to the Euroleague. How do you think it can affect the League?
A. I was surprised. It is a good team and Roberto Íñiguez is a great coach. I think their teams have always been very competitive and they will be again. Roberto has pride and will make it grow because he has always been a catalyst for that energy.
Q. Are we going towards the most competitive League in recent years?
A. The most equal, yes. With this new market I get the feeling that everything has been tightened a lot. At Valencia we have made a long squad to dominate in another way. We no longer have this roster with figures like before, but there are good players and a long roster to dominate from rhythm and energy. And then we have the little ones, which was another reason for coming here.
Q. You talk about the most even League, but is the València Basket project, due to structure, planning and resources, the most solid?
A. I don't know if we have the best roster, but we are the most powerful project in this country, without a doubt. You just have to see that a staff is created to replicate the WNBA and that is outrageous. This club is an exception. Valencia Basket is Disneyland.
Q. Is it possible to glimpse a path in women's basketball by seeing the competition in the United States with the NCAA, WNBA and now Project B? Zaragoza fans are shocked by the departure of Mariona Ortiz, the flag of this team.
A. All of these are opportunities for growth and force us to build better at the base to produce a better product. But we must begin to make a point of pedagogy: in the men's field, no one is shocked that Kevin Durant or Michael Jordan have never played in Europe. In the women's game we were very bad used to it. The Euroleague is a competition of sublime quality and it does not have these players. For this, the more quality raw material we have, the more the level of our leagues will rise. You have to invest in training and this club is already doing it. We cannot live off of getting a 9 or 10 player. We are going to try to make it the norm for several 7 and 8 players to also come out.
Q. And will that only be enough?
A. No. In addition, we need long staffs, players who are cared for, adequate pavilions, media coverage... And that does not depend on having Awa Fam or not.
Q. This Saturday you make your debut in the League with the pressure of winning...
A. I am going to debut with the pressure of doing a very good job. I don't feel the pressure of winning the League. I would like to fill the Roig Arena one day because our basketball deserves it. I put that pressure on myself. They ask me for quality, recognizable, long-lasting and sustainable work on a daily basis. We want to be defined by not giving up and we already demonstrated it in the Super Cup.
Q. You replace Rubén Burgos, who has been there for nine seasons, who was promoted to the team and who later won 11 titles. What nobody knows is that Burgos has been his main supporter.
A. I met him for several years in the lower categories of the national team and I maintain a very good relationship with him because he is a very good person. I have a lot of appreciation for him and I know that he has positioned himself and has invested heavily in me. He put my name on the table and Valencia's family had me in a good position.
Q. Is the Euroleague still inaccessible with these budgets?
A. We have to do something very big and very different from what others do to get our hands on Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray. The Moneyball movie shows us the way, how the paradigm of baseball changes because it was studied that, due to your budget, you were not going to move from two or three positions. Until a guy who goes crazy arrives and with a Harvard student they manage to change this paradigm. We have the strongest budget in Spain. In Europe, on the other hand, we are light years away and we do something different or we cannot compete face to face. I think we can be competitive, but we have to change the way we operate and the club has accepted this even though it won't be from today to tomorrow.
Q. How did you fall in love with basketball?
R. As a child. My team was Grup Barna (a club in the Clot neighborhood in Barcelona) and I didn't fall in love with watching basketball stars on TV but rather watching my father train. He still trains. He became runner-up in Spain for children with Grup Barna after losing to Universitari de Laia Palau. That was my day to day. I was hyperactive and they released me there. Then, as a teenager, I caught the Andrés Montes era and that was hard drugs. And basketball helped me in my adolescence, when I was lost, to commit to other people and to organize myself.
