Levante: Tito: "With Paco playing the attack is an obligation"
I raisedTOThe sports director of Levante analyzes the changes in the staff and talks about his future
ANDl Levante gave a swerve in the middle of last season that made him the true revelation team in the final stretch. Your sports director,Vicente Banco, Tito, (Benidorm, 1971)apostlePaco Lpezwhen the team plummets. After a mini-crisis in this campaign start,Levante has been redoneand he has in view theBernabu test, although the League of the Levant is another. The sale of Lerma, the change of system, the armoring of Bardhi or … the renewal of Tito himself appear in a very football conversation. The interview is held before Vukcevic has aggravated his injury by playing with Montenegro. The granota club has raised a formal complaint to the balkan federation.
- Is it a good time to face Real Madrid?
- It is always a good time to face Real Madrid. If you are winning a lot because you are supposed to be closer to losing. If he loses a lot, he is even closer to winning. My question is when is a good time to face Real Madrid? We are going to compete with our weapons and I am sure that we will face.
- From the Levante 18-19 squad, what are you most proud of?
- I am happy in general to have signed in most of the positions first options and that it is a compensated template. I think it has the technical players that can be placed in different positions and with which you can expand at a tactical level because you can play with different systems. It is clear that they are determinedly concrete players to play the attack, we prevent the against in case of loss but I am happy because I believe that we have signed in most cases the first options.
- Paco Lpez has finished with the idea that Levante's DNA is to be a warrior and defensive?
- In my time as a footballer, in 2003-04 and 04-05 in the promotion and that season in First Division there was an offensive team. With Preciado and with Schuster we liked to have the possession and attack. This team reminds me that this Levante has different connotations. But the figure of Paco Lpez as a technician makes that in his philosophy, in his style is a sinequanon condition go to the attack, find the opposing goalkeeper and get the goal.
- The Levante is number 12 in the LaLiga template cost limit, a reason to increase the team's requirement.
- It has increased for all teams. We improve in that classification by the sale of Lerma[30,5 millones de euros al Bournemouth]. You have that margin, that money and also that sale is used to undertake three signings, of three players from abroad like Simon, Dwamena and Vukcevic and gives you more margin. You have more chances to go to the market and even if you have competition you can fight it. Money is very important, but it is not decisive.
- Those three players he has named have played very few minutes in this season start. An is soon, the competition is very hard or does the adaptation pass bill?
- A little of those three circumstances. RaphaelDwamenanothing more to come. It was good at the beginning. Then there is a big competition ah and the coach decides who is called. It's a sporting decision, but we have to wait. There is an adaptation phase because you come from another country and you need to adapt and for that the language is fundamental. They are all teaching Spanish, but in the day I know and I see that they are doing a lot to integrate and those around them also help them. MosesSimonwe've seen it in those last 30 minutes against the Alavs that gives us that jump, when a player comes outwith speed, self-confidence, overcomes lines. In those 30 minutes we saw a kind of triler because we believe that Simon has that and that can give us that speed profile both with ball and space.Vukcevicwe consider that due to its characteristics it can be a very important midfielder, because of its positioning for the space it covers, because at a defensive level it is tactically very intelligent, but then also with the ball. He has a good touch, overcomes lines filtering interior passes and is a player who has shown in the Sporting de Braga that has grown and has made it grow because it is a team that all the years is in Europa League. As soon as you join the way of playing, our coach, the lives of Spain and Valencia in particular will give us what we have seen playing in other teams
- Levante misses Lerma?
- Surely we will miss Lerma at some moments, especially when we lose. But I do not remember the day of Betis speak to anyone of Lerma, nor the day of Valencia, nor of Celta, Getafe, Alavs. Lerma is no longer. I think that from the point of view of the sports management we have made two additions that make us presage that the team is going to compete and that in that position Lerma will not be missed or any player who has left. I am also seeing that the League begins and Madrid scores many goals without Cristiano. Now that he does not score goals, then they remember Cristiano. It is the repetition of events that occur in the world of soccer year after year.
- But it seems that there is a relationship between his absence and the change of Paco's system to clothe the team more.
- When we gave a tactical class, the teacher strengthened us that subject because it is where we said that the coach can expand and because it is where he makes differences with other coaches. It uses its systems depending on the players it has. I consider Paco a very capable technician, for me he is one of the best coaches in Spain. He has seen that there was some decompensation or lack of balance especially in the trunk of the structure of a team. That the figure of Lerma makes you think that with his physicist, his comings, his coming balanced you, of course. But there is only one Lerma. You go to the market and I have not seen any Lerma. We go to the market and we see players who can play in Levante and who can contribute and compete. The only thing he has done is to make use of his tactical resources with the resources of the players.
- That's what Pablo Machn spoke about, about the change of system in his Sevilla, provisional leader of LaLiga.
- Machn had many years in Girona and with his sports director had profiles to play that 3-4-2-1 system. He arrives at Sevilla and has very good players but even the 3-4-2-1 can not do it. And I know it makes you a variable and it puts you 3-5-2. Against us we thought he was going to play with a striker and he played with two, which is why he does not have a midfielder who acts as a playmaker like he had Borja or Portu in Girona, why is the sport planning bad? No The sports planning is good because it has signed a coach who knows how to handle the different systems, knows how to use the different resources of players.
- How are the pending renovations for Bardhi, Too and Jason going?
- WithBardhithe contract is missing because it is closed and the word of Bardhi goes to church, the ma and also the one of his agent because of the relationship that I have, I will be surprised if he did not go ahead. It is a question of coming from the selection and one day your agent approaches and signs up. WithTooHe himself has decided that the proposal that we have transferred to part of not accepting it thinks that he wants to dedicate himself to sports and later on if we see any possibility of negotiating again and we will talk about it. If he does not want the proposal that we offer him, what we do is withdraw it, not put it for when you want. We will not be waiting for the player to want.Jasonis open It is a negotiation that we expect there to be different meetings and we hope there is an agreement.
- The 25 million clause of Bardhi have fallen short?
- There is a lot of interest, he is a young player who, in his first season in Levante in the First Division, plays 26 games, scores 9 goals, none of them with a penalty. It is normal to call attention and there are quite interested teams, but we have not officially had a specific offer, although there is much interest. We want and believe that it should continue to grow in the Levant because we believe that it will grow and the Levante. And if it continues to grow a lot more and a club interested in it comes to be valued, but the idea is also in the renovation is an improvement that I think has been won on the pitch and feel valued.
- Times are different when it comes to talk about sports director renovation? You finish contract on June 30, 2019.
- S that are different. I understand that a sports director probably on February 1 should no longer have a contract with his club. Because if you finish on June 30, I'll try to be as professional as I'm going to be in Levante next year and in two and in three. I want the Levante to be able to take advantage of my work when I leave, that I have very clear. But perhaps it could be considered that the end of the contracts of the sports directors was on February 1 because it does not make much sense that from June 30 a sports director is not in that club and you are working to renew players, for Buy players for the upcoming season. I see that some sports director has reached an agreement with another club and that maybe he is closing it but for another club where he is going to go. On a professional level, it does not seem good to me. At a professional level I will not do that because what I want is to finish my work well, the project that I was given and that I cogged and that I hope will end with a stay in this season 18-19, which I feel proud of. to have taken the club and to fulfill the objective. And with that happy and for my house or for where I go either in the Levant or where I leave here.
- As it says it sounds like goodbye.
- No no. I'm very calm I am enjoying my work, I am very happy and I feel good. Like that I can not control, I'm not going to wear out. I understand that the club is going to anticipate elections, that the president is going to present himself, probably in December …
- And he will come out again as president.
- And be good for the Levant because the president ends a series of projects that have started and that illusion that generates not only good for him but also for the Levant. If the club considers that Tito has to continue, s that it is true that maybe times, like I have to pose some time to say 'hey I have to tell you that I do not have any agreement with anyone, I have no proposal, to today I am thinking about the Levante '. It does not depend on m. But I know I say one thing. I will be grateful from the first day that Quico Cataln calls me to sit with me. That possibility, that gift that makes me the president with the council to be responsible for the sports area of Levante in the Second Division having been a player, even involves sentimental issues. If we have to sit down for a continuity well, if that meeting or there is a communication from the president that Tito has no offer of continuity, well also. I'm ready for everything.
- The last one, it's a curiosity. Has he received any reproach from the club because a very promising Valencian player is in the quarry of Valencia and not in Levante, calling himself lex Blanco and being his son?
- He was a player that I also put on the table. The president and the technical secretary sat down with his agent, we tried to sign him but lex Blanco decided that it was not the place he wanted to come to but it was another he left, without more. It is very important to know that although that moment was not of age, at 15 years old he decided to go to Barcelona, with 17 to go back home and see that he has the possibility of going to Levante or Valencia. I think there were some bonds of protection that grabbed him for having spent four years in Valencia. It was in the quarry of Valencia. As a joke, I fall many things. But I think, seriously, that at a sporting level we would have come very well. I think he will be growing up in this club, he will be well protected and I think he will have chances to reach the top, but I am his father, I am not his master.