When Suso glances across at the 11 men lined up on the other side of the tunnel on Tuesday evening, the guy with the armband wearing No 8 will look familiar. Nine years have passed, it was brief and much has changed, but the hair hasn’t.
“A little blond kid,” the Sevilla forward says. Officially, he and Martin Ødegaard have never been on a football pitch together but there was a time when they shared a field daily, their careers ahead of them. The Norwegian was 15, the Spaniard 20. More than 700 senior games later, they meet again.
“When I was at Liverpool, Ødegaard came to try out with us for a week,” Suso says. “It was that time when everyone wanted him. He trained with Madrid, with Liverpool and a few others. He stood out: left-footed, which I always notice more as a left-footer myself, hair like it is now. He had lots of ability. I don’t think I’ve seen him since.”
Ødegaard was a kid, Europe’s most sought-after footballer: it was not him on trial, it was the clubs, Liverpool, Barcelona and Bayern Munich among them. But while he got to choose Madrid and is Arsenal captain at 24, that didn’t make it easy. Just how hard it can be is easily overlooked, Suso says. It is also underlined by the company they kept.
Suso, too, could have joined Madrid but had left home for Liverpool at 16, alone, the latest talented young Spaniard signed by Rafa Benítez. The week he arrived, in November 2010, Mikel San José departed and Antonio Barragán had already gone, but there was Dani Pacheco, Dani Ayala and Francis Durán.
“We had agreed everything verbally with Madrid: we had been there to see the residency, the schools, the training ground, everything,” Suso says. “That same day, Pedro Campos and Eduardo Macià, who worked with Rafa, called and said: ‘Don’t go there,’ that they would sort it with Cádiz.
“It was a period where young players in Spain weren’t getting opportunities, whereas in England they played the Carling Cup, the FA Cup. As a project and a culture, it attracted me more. Opportunities in Spain were always there; maybe the chance to join Liverpool was only going to be once in a lifetime. I had always lived at home with my parents and going somewhere so far away, so different to Cádiz, was a big change.”
Cádiz is in Spain’s south-west corner, a warm, funny place, home of the country’s most famous carnival. He arrived at a club changing ownership and coaches, 1,175 miles north. Benítez was gone. He moved flat “three or four times”. One teammate recalls Suso’s car window being smashed, his wallet stolen. Then there was the language.
Sevilla celebrate after Roma’s Gianluca Mancini’s own goal in the Europa League final last season. They went on to win 4-1 on penalties. Photograph: Annegret Hilse/Reuters
Now there is a laugh. Suso talks fondly of the experience, a “welcoming” city where the fans live football differently, “another level”, a club he still follows; about the friends he made and the family he found.
“I could understand [Steven] Gerrard better but [Jamie] Carragher was incredible. But then, put an English kid in Cádiz with my mates and it would be the same.
“I liked it a lot; I was happy in Liverpool. The goalkeeper coach was Spanish, there were Spanish physios, the fitness coach was Spanish. You’re miles from home, but that made it easier. Rafa used to get annoyed with us. After training or at breakfast, you’d sit with Spaniards. Of course you would. He would come over: ‘No, no, not you together, not speaking Spanish.’ But what are you going to do?
“We were young. I’d come alone. Dani [Pacheco] and I spent practically every day together. I got on very well with José Enrique and Luis Suárez, who always tried to protect me, help me. Players go at 25, 26, 27, and don’t adapt so imagine at 16. Now that I have kids, to think about my son leaving home …
“When you arrive [at 16], you can live with an English family who work for the club or have a member of your own family go with you. We asked Rafa and he said that to get used to the culture, the language and everything, best to live with an English family. I joined the same family Dani had been with and it was spectacular. They were great, so lovely. Phil and Dee and their three kids, Simon, Robert and Paul.
“It was another culture. The first few days, they would call me down for dinner at 7pm. I’m there with the laptop on the table [to translate] because I don’t understand anything and couldn’t say anything. I said: ‘I can’t eat at 7pm. Leave me some and I’ll heat it up later,’” Suso says, laughing.
Suso loved his time at Liverpool, despite arriving after Rafa Benítez had left. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
“They were my brothers, my second family, the people who looked after me. We still speak all the time. Last season they came to Seville in the Europa League. They’re Liverpool fans so were happy when we beat Manchester United. I got a lot of messages that day.
“I was taken to Liverpool by Rafa and almost as soon as I arrived he had gone. I think it wasn’t even a week. But Roy Hodgson comes and I start to train with the first team and then Brendan [Rodgers] comes and I make my debut, play in the league and the Europa League.
“Brendan was the closest thing to a Spanish coach, his way of playing, the tactical plans. He was a brave, giving me and Raheem Sterling a debut. He used to talk to me in Spanish, which he loved to learn. That helped me. But where as now you see kids aged 16, 17, 18 in the first team, that was practically impossible then.”
Aged 19, Suso went on loan at Almería, the season Liverpool almost won the league. “I was so excited about that, although it’s true I did say: ‘Bloody hell, now that I’m not there, they’re close …’” he says, laughing. “I went the year the Americans bought the club and started making lots of signings. Brendan said: ‘Stay here, I’m going to keep counting on you.’ But when you’re young maybe you don’t think things through fully, don’t have the patience. I wanted to go to a ‘normal’ team where I could play every game and come back more mature, ready. Maybe if I was in that situation again now I wouldn’t do the same.
“When I returned I had one year left on my contract. I wanted to renew and Liverpool wanted me to but [Adriano] Galliani called me because Milan were rejuvenating their squad. It was an offer I liked, a new challenge, wanting to feel important. I had been at Liverpool four years and was happy but Milan was also a big club. If it had been another club I might not have left. I would have stayed at Liverpool.”
Suso would have liked the chance to play under Jürgen Klopp, left with a feeling of what might have been, but the move worked out. “Milan were a bit adrift but when [Vincenzo] Montella came, it changed. I had a year on loan [at Genoa] and was contemplating another but he told me I would be important. He’s been one of the most significant coaches in my career.”
That 2016-17 season Suso provided more assists than anyone. In four years there were 36 of them, before returning home for €24m.
Jose Mendilibaris ‘gave us a simplicity, a normality. He was noble, he treated everyone the same,’ says Suso. Photograph: Bernadett Szabó/Reuters
“When [Stefano] Pioli came and things were not looking so good, the chance to join Sevilla came up. I had worked with Julen Lopetegui for Spain at every age group from U16 to the seniors. I wanted to get back to Spain because I had left very young without playing there.
“Sevilla was close to home, competing with the best. I arrived in January and we won the Europa League six months later.”
Three years on, they won it again, knocking out United en route. In the semi-final. Suso again scored – a belter against Juventus, his second family in Seville to see it. The run, the whole season, still defies rational analysis, a year of crisis, near relegation and three managerial spells somehow ending in triumph. Suso might have walked away midseason, had he not suspected that Jorge Sampaoli, the manager who did not trust in him, was not going to last much longer, that a second chance would come.
“Last year was …” he starts, the words failing him. “If someone told you, you wouldn’t believe it. It was very hard psychologically, so many changes, the World Cup in the middle, all super strange. We came from Lopetegui, changed to Sampaoli, then to [José Luis] Mendilibar, the manager who in terms of ‘a name’ might have provoked the biggest doubts but with whom it went brilliantly. In the last three months, we won practically everything. When we equalised in the final, we knew if it got to penalties we were going to win.”
Why? “Because of the way the year was, how we were playing with the new manager. Because of Bono too – he had not been playing in the league and it was like football owed him. From Lopetegui to Sampaoli was a drastic change; things were made more complicated. Mendilibar gave us a simplicity, a normality. He was noble, he treated everyone the same. That’s nice in football.”
But not so common – “well, I understand that pleasing 25 players is impossible,” Suso says – and no guarantee you will be treated the same way in return. Less than six months on, Mendilibar has gone, sacked after a difficult start despite Sevilla’s seventh Europa League and returning them to the Champions League.
Setting up a reunion, too. Suso has been watching Arsenal play, watching All Or Nothing too , and has been impressed by Mikel Arteta and his captain. “They’re a candidate to win the Champions League because of how they’ve been playing, the way they work, the coach,” he says.
“He’s learned from Pep Guardiola, the best in the world, and they have [shared] concepts. I see a manager who motivates and I like the way they construct play, the different approaches: full-backs inside, full-backs outside. The way Arsenal press when they lose the ball is spectacular. They’ve played very good football for the last two years.
“I see Ødegaard and I’m surprised by how he has improved. A coach has come who believed in him, took him under his wing and gave him lots of confidence and games and now he’s the player he is.”
