• Match report: Valencia 2-0 Real Sociedad
• Match report: Real Madrid 1-1 Villarreal
• Match report: Granada 1-3 Barcelona
At the start of Valencia’s match against Real Sociedad at noon on Sunday, 18 players and coaches occupied two benches at the Mestalla, accompanied by a supporting cast of doctors, delegates, physios and fitness trainers. There were seven Spaniards, three Portuguese, two Brazilians, two Argentinians and one Finn. There were also three Scots. To the right, the Real Sociedad manager David Moyes and his assistant Billy McKinlay dressed in smart blue suits, Moyes’s jacket soon discarded, sleeves rolled up. To the left, Valencia’s Portuguese manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, a great big bear of a man somehow not melting in shirt, tie, jumper, jacket and the midday sun, and behind him, in the shadow somewhere, his assistant Ian Cathro.
Cathro is from Dundee. A knee ligament injury meant that his playing career, spent as a youth teamer at Forfar and an amateur at Brechin City, did not last long but it wasn’t going far anyway: “There was no great sob story,” he says. He does not speak perfect Spanish yet. And he was born in July 1986, making him younger than four of Valencia’s starting XI on Sunday. At 28, Diego Alves, Álvaro Negredo, Enzo Pérez and Javi Fuego are all older them him and considerably more experienced. He is slight and quiet, or so most people assume, and largely goes unnoticed. But that doesn’t stop Nuno describing him as a “genius”, integral to the success of the side aspiring to be Spain’s third force.
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source Sport | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1Awrmfy
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