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At the beginning of the film, Andrés Iniesta catches a fish. Some spectators applaud, fans rush after him. The scene takes place on the seafront in Kobe, Japan, where the Spanish world champion, the double European champion and the winner of the multiple Champions League is finishing his career. Iniesta catches a fish in a strange city on the other side of the world: that sounds banal, but represents the true success of his life.
The documentary “Iniesta, the unexpected hero” explains why this is so. Internet streaming platform Rakuten.tv is the owner of Iniesta’s current club Vissel Kobe and the main sponsor of his life club FC Barcelona, and he also started production himself. From the beginning, it is not about objectivity.
The strip has nothing to do with conventional hero incense. On the contrary, Iniesta and his biographer Marcos López want to show the breaks and, therefore, give a more intimate view than ever about the depression that endangered his career, just as he was nearing his climax.
Iniesta won the Champions League title four times
PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP
“Losing against Iniesta felt good”
Of course, this movie is also about the virtuous midfielder. Some word contributions are more original than one is used to in such documentaries: when Pep Guardiola compares his game to the seduction of a bullfighter, when Samuel Eto’o sees him win the World Cup as Cameroon’s national coach or Gianluigi Buffon admits that Losing to Iniesta was never a problem because he felt good somehow.
But, above all, it is about the Iniesta people; and therefore one of those people who don’t demand attention and may seem pointless at first glance. For whom it is worth taking a look. A sensitive person who wrote a love letter to his wife Anna to deal with the loss of a child in the eighth month of pregnancy.
Iniesta scored two mythical goals; 1-1 in injury time from the 2009 Champions League semi-final in Chelsea and the 1-0 winning goal in the 117th minute of the 2010 World Cup final against the Netherlands. In the middle he sank into the hole: Iniesta’s gaze went nowhere, his friends did not recognize him; his mother tells him how he entered his room at night. “Mom, can I sleep in bed with you?” He is said to have said. A 25-year-old star in need as a child.
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Iniesta’s story also tells the price of success.
For the Spaniards, Andrés Iniesta’s story is more than “only” that of scoring his most important goal. The story of the pale boy from the village of Fuentealbilla of 2000 souls in the Quixote region of La Mancha is a parable that it is possible to succeed in the world. Yes, even someone who doesn’t seem made for a scene as outgoing and raucous as soccer can do it.
But this story also tells the victims.
With his goal at Stamford Bridge in 2009, he not only allowed the historic sextet of coach Pep Guardiola’s legendary team. Nine months later, according to researchers, the birth rate in Barcelona has increased by 16 percent. “He made us all happy,” said Iniesta’s father at the time to his son’s best friend: “Why does he have to be the only unlucky man?”
Iniesta after the draw in the 2009 Champions League semi-final against Chelsea
Jamie McDonald / Getty Images
Falling into depression after a break is not uncommon, her psychologist explains. In addition, there are frequent injuries and one death: Dani Jarque, captain of Espanyol Barcelona and friend Iniestas, died of sudden cardiac death in 2009. A healthy person could have handled all of this somehow. But the traumatic separation from her parents was still latent in Iniesta when she was twelve years old. “I paid the toll for this trip later,” he says.
“A train like this only happens once in a lifetime”
Before the family left for Barcelona to take him to La Masia del Barça soccer boarding school, the father had to persuade Andrés, who was initially reluctant: a train like this only happens once in a lifetime, he had said. “The train, the train over and over …” remembers the mother. But when they were told in Barcelona that they had to separate from him now, it was the father who threw himself on the floor in the hotel room and wanted to pick him up immediately. “Now you brought him here, now give the whole thing a chance,” said the mother.
“I don’t know what would have happened to my story without her,” Iniesta says of her mother. Ultimately, it is a story with a happy ending, the Spanish dream, of a province to a world star and a world champion. Iniesta won her toughest game not with a pirouette or an archery, but in tough therapy sessions with her psychologist, like many people, everywhere, every day.
He did not come back from depression himself, but someone better, says Iniesta. This is another reason why you can count all of this, now that you live in Japan with your Anna and four children, away and for free, at home around the world.
