“Playing against Real Madrid is like going to Disneyland for a day”

And in the north-east of Murcia, land of furniture and wine with designation of origin, his family found accommodation, with his five brothers, arriving in two batches. “Living in Argentina is crazy, but here, honestly, we have a future. There, insecurity is another way of living. The right, the left, the military governed… and they all pissed off the people,” he comments before assessing the place where he has been putting down roots for almost forty years: “I kiss Yecla, you don’t know what we have here.”

At 17, in the late 80s, he was already playing for the defunct Yeclano CF. “We were more than 20 players and only me from Yecla. I was part of this team until the age of 23 and I coincided with Eloy Jiménez, José Luis Oltra, Javi López… all of them are also coaches now. Although he has been there for several seasons, he soon leaves in search of minutes in other clubs. “I didn’t even play the Thursday games,” he said.

From footballer to coach

“I went to Villarrobledo where, in six months, I only won one. There, life taught me what modest football is,” he comments while affirming that he had to survive off the field: “I worked in a factory manufacturing foam rubber for 6-2 furniture. Then, in the afternoon, I went to train wherever I was.” In one of these destinations, he coincided with Pepe Bordalás, then at Eldense, but he ended up in the Third Division “to Hellín or back to Yeclano, always where he could play”.

And overnight, following Luis Aragonés, he went from the field to the bench at 32 years old in the refounded Yeclano Deportivo after the disappearance of the old club due to debts. “I played on a Sunday, the coach was fired and on Wednesday I train. It was in 2005-2006. A year before the same thing happened to Unai Emery in Lorca, people in Murcia were talking about it a lot because they were two situations in the same region, and look how it went for Emery,” he says smiling.

He led the team for five years, managing to be promoted to the now defunct 2nd B. “We have made 14 recruits in five seasons, all of them came from Yecla. The new team never owed anything, but we ended up being relegated to 10-11 in a year in which the brick crisis took several teams out of the category; Roquetas, Jumilla, Poli Ejido…” he said before taking a step forward which was truly an odyssey. “Real Murcia signed me to their subsidiary and I’m here for two years. The second was horrible, wild, because we spent six months without pay, traveling 200 km per day by car.

This situation made him, for the first time, forget football for a year. “I needed to rest, to catch my breath,” said Sandroni before finding himself at another crossroads when he returned to the Olímpic de Xátiva bench with Alfonso Rus, as president of the club when he was also mayor of the city. Some will remember him because the UCO of the Civil Guard considered that he had financed the club with bribes which reached two million euros.

Back at Yecla, he reached the highest levels with the local team in the year of the pandemic with the ‘playoffs’ dispute for promotion to second place, but it was a poisoned arrow: “We had a spectacular first part of the season, with an economic surplus. We still had to receive Cartagena, Murcia… significant box offices, but that killed us. The club was serious and paid everything to the players when that money was going to be used for the following campaign. In short, chaos”, even if he declares bluntly: “At that moment, I realized that I wanted to train, to dedicate myself only to this.”

He signed for Linares of the 1st RFEF, rejecting an offer from Penya Deportiva d’Ibiza that Manolo González, now coach of Espanyol, had accepted, and it was not a good decision “they didn’t give me time, they kicked me out on the fourth day”.

The following season, he answered the call of Juanfran Torres, then general manager of Intercity, to obtain permanence in the final days after facing a moribund team. The following campaign continued in the Alicante team, but non-payment problems, dissensions between Juanfran and the ownership that led to the dismissal of the former Atlético player and numerous broken promises made the season, despite the salvation, a disaster when more was expected. In 24/25, it lasts five games: “They fired me because we weren’t in the top four when it all just started.”

And he arrives at Talavera, after the team lost five games in a row, all of its matches in the month of November, and, with training the previous afternoon, eliminated its players against Malaga before hosting, now in the round of 16, Real Madrid. “For me, this game is like going to Disneyland one day. As the ‘third player’ that I am, with over 600 games of modest football, it’s a reward for giving up so much, a reward for my family,” he says. And he concludes: “Two weeks ago I was at home looking at the ceiling, but sometimes dreams come true.

Clinging to the reality of the category, he is objective and knows that “we must try to reduce the blow, because the important thing is to save the category in 1st RFEF. “This is what will give us work next year.” But it is clear that “Real Madrid is better in almost everything, but not in motivation and passion; we are better at it and, even so, I don’t think it will give us a chance to win. As soon as they set the pace… And he “Our match will be made up of many 10-minute matches. Every 10 minutes we will see if we can hold on. I will not demand that my players win because, under normal conditions, that is impossible. But I will demand that they give everything.”

He does not want to forget his rival on the bench, the controversial Xabi Alonso. “Being where he is, it’s normal that everything is scrutinized a lot more because we coaches are always the perfect excuse above all else. Xabi, at this level, is not going to teach his players anything, I think it is about managing egos and disturbing them as little as possible. It has already happened to Ancelotti when talking about the management of his group or when talking about the great talent of Zidane,” concludes Sandroni.