Luis Enrique and the Champions League won ten years ago with the little Xana that celebrated on the pitch

Luis Enrique He is a man who has crossed the most unspeakable pain. In 2019 he lost his nine -year -old daughter, Xana, for a bone cancer. There is a photo that portrays them together, an image that has gone around the world. He dates back to 2015, for Luis Enrique and Xana is a happy night. At the Olympiastadion in Berlin, Barcelona has just won the Champions Leaguebeating Juventus in the final. The little Xana holds a Catalan flag and try to wave itunder the amused eyes of the father. It happened ten years ago. Saturday 31 May, ten years later, Luis Enrique brought another team, the Paris Saint-Germain, in the Champions League final. The Spaniard, once again in Germany, but this time at the Bayern Arena in Munich, will try to conquer the most prestigious cup for the second time as a coach. The opponent is Simone Inzaghi’s Inter.

In all these years Luis Enrique spoke of Xana, as “a star that illuminates our family”, said “a lucky father because I had a splendid daughter for nine years”. Lucho, as they called him in Rome, in his year on the Giallorossi bench (2011-12), is a right man, a “Hombre vertical” who has never compromised and who knows how to be hard, with his players and journalists. Ask for information from De Rossi, sent to the stands because he arrived a minute late at a technical meeting. Totti himself, in his autobiography, says that at the moment of the Spanish leave he tried “a thriving pain, because I had a real person in front”. Or ask Spanish reporters following the national team, with whom Luis Enrique has had very hard comparisons. But De Rossi loves him. And he indicated him as one of the coaches who were most decisive in his career on the bench. But in Spain – net of verbal clashes – the estimate in man and in the coach has never been lacking. Even when he lost: his fair play is exemplary when, after the semifinal of the European 2021 lost with Italy, he went to congratulate his colleague Mancini and all the Azzurri.

Married to Elena Cullel, graduated in Economics, in addition to Xana two other older children, Pacho and Sira, Barcelona as a place of the heart. In its daily routine great relevance have the rigor and discipline, which Luis Enrique imposes first of all to himself. Every half hour, whatever is doing, in the field or home, the Spaniard performs a series of physical exercises. A mini-year training of a few minutes who give him wellness. It has a rigorous system of values, which circulates in the changing rooms, in the working groups, in the teams that trains. He is a leader who made himself appreciated by Messi – trained at Barcelona – and by the dozens of players he accompanied on his path.

At fifty -five years – he turned them on May 8 – Luis Enrique is a man who offers the profile in the wind. His wrinkles marked on an oblong face, his looks that keep the trace of a pain that will never go away, his pose, which can be angular or caresses, but always is true, never Ruffiana and never liked. In the 90s he was a successful footballer, one of the best Spaniards ever – the Great Pelé included him on the list of the 125 strongest of all time – and now he is confirming himself as an excellent coach. But its difference must be found elsewhere. Why Luis Enrique made ethics his existential figure. Winning or losing depends on a wind blow, life is measured in the track that we leave in the heart and looks of others.