Manchester City

Everyone spoke directly to Andrés, even if he was thousands and thousands of kilometers away. They spoke to him through a mirror. It was not very big. But that mirror in front of them, which they constantly looked at, served as a connecting thread.

It was as if the cameras, in the hands of Alejandro Garcia and Albert Eritja, wisely led by Oriol Bosch, the first director of the documentary, did not exist. Only that pampered and protected mirror, which flew around the world, turned into the great treasure of four madmen and, at the same time, ordered months of final work to surprise the co-director of the work, himself Andres Iniesta.

A work built with patience iniestana. In other words, years and years of handling the idea. It is not an exaggeration. Since 2012, when he decided to start the book The play of my life, written with Ramon Besa, which ended up appearing in September 2016.

That old project was activated, now, with his march to Japan, the second vital trip that the former Barca captain undertook. The first was from Fuentealbilla to La Masia (1996); the second, from Camp Nou to Kobe (2018).

Year and a half of work

A year, therefore, to outline the documentary, inspired by Andrés and later promoted by Joel Borràs, the founder of Sports & Life, the company that represents him, and endorsed the project by Rakuten One year on paper and four more months to discover the facet of Producer Andrés making work a little easier for the terribly efficient Miriam Botí and Marta Vilarrasa.

When something got stuck due to logical agenda issues -all the filming was done in full competition when soccer lived in normality, oblivious to the danger that was coming upon it-, he would pick up his mobile and send messages to former teammates.

So, impossible doors opened instantly like “Harry Potter with a wand” as he defined it Luis Enrique in the documentary. Unreachable walls were transformed into peaceful trails. And endless and cumbersome filters were instantly unraveled.

Sometimes that help was not necessary. Just mentioning their name and entire clubs, such as Espanyol, Madrid, Manchester City, Chelsea, Juventus, Paris SG, Hercules, Burgos, Albacete and Vissel Kobe for example, generously delivered everything they had. At Barça, none of this was necessary.

It was his house and it was wide open to parade everyone complicitly in front of that mirror. Since Valverde, he was still a coach, Messi. Since Pique to Suarez, whom he welcomed next to him in the locker room when he came treated like a criminal after the bite to Chiellini in the World Cup in Brazil-2014.

Close to the “abyss”

In the selection, more of the same. Of Ramos to towers, from the Madrid captain and symbol to the Child who is an Atlético legend, passing by Vicente del Bosque, the coach who waited for him when he lived the darkest and darkest year of his sports career. The year in which he scored the goal of Stamford Bridge and fell into the “abyss”, as he confesses Mari, his mother. And nods in anguish Jose Antonio, his father.

And accurately certifies Inma Puig, his psychologist, who appears for the first time in public to tell what the patient Andrés. Mari had never been out before either. Discreet and shy as she always is, she wanted to avoid the visit in front of the mirror.

It took a train trip from Barcelona to Valencia plus a Valencia-Fuentealbilla taxi, with a taxi driver from the town, to break that distrust with the camera. But she ended up sitting in the same chair discovering to her son things that not even he knew. Nor, of course, had he ever heard of his own mother. Not everything is always said. And if it is bad, even less. Why make children suffer!

“I don’t know what to do. This is the first time this has happened to me. You are the one who knows. What interests us is the Andrés person, not the player” (Guardiola to Inma Puig, psychologist)

Those moments have all suffered in silence. At home, much more. In the field, they didn’t even know it yet. “We did not realize the magnitude of the situation that Andrés lived in,” he confessed. PiqueStill reproaching himself that “we could have helped him more”.

But no one entered that torment. “I don’t know what to do. This is the first time this has happened to me,” he said. Pep Guardiola to Inma Puig. “You are the one who knows. What interests us is the Andrés person, not the player,” the then-Barça coach told the psychologist, who did not undertake this complex task of reconstruction alone.

Black months

“I don’t say it because I want to be an example of anything. No, no. I say it because it happened to me and a lot of people do,” Andrés explains, not knowing that Anna, his wife, relates in front of the mirror those black months in which she was holding him as then he was holding her when they lost the child they were expecting.

“We are made for each other because we understand each other very well, with just looking at us we already know what we think” (Anna Ortiz, Andrés’s wife)

“We are made for each other because we understand each other very well, just by looking at each other we already know what we think,” he explains after starring in a courtship at two speeds. “For me, it was a crush instantly, it cost her a little more,” Andrés remembers looking at the mirror.

But Anna, along with the whole family (Maribel, her sister, Juanmi, her brother-in-law) worked as valuable and silent pillars to support a person whose greatest drama was that she did not find herself. “Yes, I have been surprised by many things they have said. I had not heard them before,” admits Andrés, still amazed at knowing new things about his life. Or how those around her have lived it. Not everything is in Google. There is always something new that, in the end, does end up in Google.

Two Iniestas

There were then two Iniesta: the one who saw people, famous player, who had everything, forced to project that image outside of indestructible winner. And then there was the real one, the real one. The inner Iniesta, the one who shut himself up at home, slept with his mother or was lying on the sofa, as revealed Sesi, one of his friends, unwilling to do anything.

He even believed that he had forgotten to play soccer. Buffon, Another of soccer’s myths, he opened the home of the Vechia Signora to sit in front of the mirror and tell Andrés things. United both, although invisible. Gianluigi overcame a depression and then won the 2006 World Cup; Andrés overcame a depression and won the 2010 World Cup.

More than 50 characters

Juventus, like Chelsea (“my hand stayed 18 millimeters from the ball”, he confessed Petr Cech, the Czech goalkeeper, the first time he spoke of the Iniestazo more than a decade later), it arrived without the need for producer Andrés to activate his magical WhatsApp.

And Stamford Bridge, one of his four favorite temples, made himself available to him. He was not there, but it seemed that this shot was reproduced in the imposing silence caused by any empty stadium. That shot caused such an impact that it increased the birth rate in Catalonia after May 2009. The other three are the Fuentealbilla track, the Camp Nou and the Soccer City of Johannesburg.

In record time, more than 50 people sat behind that mirror knowing that they were actually looking into the eyes of a person who was watching them from Kobe. Distance was no problem. Not even the time difference with Japan.

The script is signed by Pep Bras, Laia Miranda and Raül Llimós and the impeccable sound (we discovered that there are annoying chairs that make noise) belongs to Gerard Tàrrega. But everything, in the end, was in the hands of Oriol and Andrés, who only needed to sneak into the post-production room to help in those delicate hands of the editors Jordi Arañó and Óscar Hernando, who left their eyelashes after cutting hours and hours of recordings in just 86 minutes.

He did not physically enter that tiny room in El Barrio, but he was present, through constant messages with Oriol, while Itziar Larisgoitia, postproduction coordinator, knitted alongside David Lopez and Iñaki Sanz that job. And the look was the work of the director and Jordi Bransuela, the colorist, with Alex Vilches, assuming the audio postpo. All playing to complete a movie that talks about life more than football.

Although Andrés was the producer and coordinator from Kobe, contacting his friends so that they were always punctual, as he likes so much. And on Thursday, through the Rakuten TV platform, the first joint work signed by Andrés and Oriol will be seen: Andrés Iniesta, the unexpected hero, made by Producciones del Barrio de Jordi Évole and Ramon Lara.

Or how life is told by dialoguing with a mirror. There are only two people who appear briefly in the documentary, but without sitting down. “For Andrés, whatever it takes,” said Dani’s father. “Will you see him soon? If you see him, give him a very big hug, we love him very much,” she said. She was the mother of Dani Jarque. Instantly, he knew it. And cried.