Pablo Hernandez

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Cjay
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

Post by Cjay »

The amazing thing about Pablo is we didnt even see him in his prime.

He was different level at Valencia, that Pablo keeps Jack Harrison out of our first 11 and pushes Raph very close for our best player.

Prime Pablo was a top quality winger, its a shame we never got to see him at his absolute best
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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This is the one I was on about ...glorious
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Today's performance from Pablo showed why he is different class to the rest of our central midfielders.

Still cant believe he hasn't featured much in 2021.
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Click on it to view the tweet in full.

Goodbye Pablo, Mar and family :verysad:
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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:verysad:
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

Post by Scoobychief »

Pablo what a man, outstanding service for us, Thank you Hernandez
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

Post by 1964white »

I took my eye off the match as Pablo & Gaetano took all the plaudits from our substitutes, coaches & Marcelo eventually making their way to the top of the stand where the hug took place & both remained there until the end of the game


Screenshot 2021-05-24 07.45.50.png
Screenshot 2021-05-24 07.45.50.png (305.3 KiB) Viewed 987 times
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Pablo Hernandez's first half vs. West Brom:

42 touches
22/34 successful passes
7 succ. final third passes (Joint-First) :gold:
5 ball recoveries (Joint-First) :gold:
3/5 successful long passes
2 ground duels won
2 crosses
1 successful take-on
1 chance created
1 time fouled

Vintage Pablito


Screenshot 2021-05-24 08.02.12.png
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Pablo has gone home :love:

Good luck Pablo.
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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We need to replace him.

Good luck Pablo :love:
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

Post by lufc1304 »

Best player we had during our years in exile; as Cjay said further up this thread, we didn't even get him in his prime and he was still magnificent.

Good luck, Pablo. You may have gone home, but you will always be Leeds!!
"When the going gets weird, the weird get professional!" Hunter S Thompson
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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https://theathletic.com/2741172/2021/07 ... directed=1

Full Pablo interview with Phil Hay. Wouldn't usually copy a whole article but its probably the last in depth interview we will get from the King for some time, possibly ever.

In different parts of Europe they find different ways of eulogising Pablo Hernandez. His name and shirt number are spray-painted on the outer wall of Valencia’s training ground. In the centre of Leeds, he is the subject of a glorious mural, as high as a house and visible from a mile away.

Last week, on the night when he announced that he was joining Castellon, Hernandez got the same treatment. A tower beside Castellon’s stadium was decorated with a photograph of him, stretching from top to bottom. Underneath were the words “Siempre Ahi”; “always there” in Spanish — which is how Hernandez feels about Castellon and how Castellon feel about him.

“It’s my club, my city,” Hernandez says, and it only takes one visit to that part of Spain to understand what he means. He grew up there and his heart was there, even through the years at Leeds United which he regards as “the best of my life”. This was the transfer, the agreement Hernandez always hoped to strike one day. Other clubs dangled more money in front of him this summer, some a substantial amount, but none of them offered the same emotion. Castellon were relegated last season and Hernandez has joined a third division team. But love is unconditional.

“The first time I watched football, it was with my dad in this stadium,” he says. “I was three or four years old. I played football from five and when I was eight or nine, I joined this club before I went to Valencia’s academy. I had other clubs who wanted to sign me, better options from an economic point of view, and I had options in Spain’s second and first divisions. Some in other countries too. But this is the best one for me, for my family and for life.

“In football you never know what will happen but as you say in England, it’s now or never with Castellon. This was my time to come and play for the club and the shirt. To have my friends and family watching in the stands — it’s a dream.”

He smiles as he talks about it, full of youthful excitement. And he is right. It was, in all probability, now or never for Castellon and Hernandez. He is 36 and he has precious few transfers left in him. He was a free agent after leaving Leeds United and he co-owns Castellon, making negotiations nice and straightforward. He was as keen on them as they were on him and when the topic of retirement comes up, he laughs in the same way he always has whenever his longevity is mentioned.

“Honestly, I don’t think about this,” he says. “I never thought about it straight after Leeds. I think I’ve got two or three more years at a good level. My feeling is I can still play, and I always say the same: when I don’t feel like this, I’ll say ‘enough’. When it’s time I will accept it.”

He felt the urge to fight the ticking clock at Leeds last season, when a year in the Premier League left him cold and inactive. Leeds, for most of his five years at Elland Road, was a dream for Hernandez but the last six months weighed on him heavily, personally and professionally. Castellon is a fresh start with new objectives. And even at the age of 36, Hernandez needs them.

Hernandez was a wildcard when Leeds signed him in 2016, a former Spain international whose career had taken an unexpected turn and lured him out to the Middle East. A six-month loan from Al-Arabi in Qatar was a tentative deal and the midfielder was a slow burn at Elland Road, feeling his way back into England with limited expectancy until his feet caught fire.

His reputation at Castellon is different. He is the squad’s most recognisable face and, at a low level of the Spanish pyramid, he knows he will have to shine and replicate his impact in Yorkshire. Castellon are still to unveil their new kit for this season but the club expect that when they do, Hernandez will pick the No 19 and his shirt will outsell everyone else’s. Football matters in his home city and season ticket sales are not far off the club’s cap of 15,000.

For him, a dream move and a lifelong ambition comes with no small amount of pressure. “Yes, that’s obvious,” he says. “I see this and I’m ready for this. I love pressure. My experience in football so far tells me that when I have pressure or difficult challenges in front of me, I always find the best of me. This will be the same I hope.

“I prefer to have this pressure and I like it. I know that when I play for Castellon, the people in the stands, the TV cameras, they are all going to be looking at me and focusing on me, on what I do on the pitch. Am I good or not? Can I give them what they expect? But I want it to be like this. Playing in a team where nobody expects anything of you — that’s not me. I wouldn’t want that

The dynamic created at Castellon by the signing of Hernandez is interesting and unusual, placing a club shareholder in the dressing room. Castellon’s squad are managed by Sergio Escobar, a 46-year-old with a decade of coaching experience. He was reappointed by the club after relegation last season resulted in the sacking of Juan Carlos Garrido. Castellon had been promoted twice following the takeover which Hernandez and his father, Alfonso, helped to fund in 2017 and demotion was a backwards step. The recruitment of Hernandez as a player is part of a concerted push to rejoin Spain’s top two tiers quickly.

Hernandez and Escobar know each other well. Escobar coached Castellon’s reserve side when Hernandez became a co-owner and went on to become first-team boss. Although he was sacked in ruthless style in 2018, that decision was taken by another shareholder, Jose Miguel Garrido, whose negative input led Hernandez to estrange himself from the running of the club temporarily. Garrido sold his stake soon after and has not been missed. Escobar was happy to return.

All around him, Hernandez has friends and associates: Escobar, sporting director Xavi Galvan — a long-term friend — and Angel Dealbert, the club’s technical secretary. Hernandez and Dealbert used to travel on the same bus to training when both of them were in Castellon’s academy. There are many people in that part of Spain who hoped that one day Hernandez would appear in black and white. In his time at Leeds, he was not involved in day-to-day decisions at Castellon but they would ask his advice about potential transfers and other relevant matters. As a player, he will continue to fulfil his shareholder duties.

“It’s difficult, for sure,” Hernandez says. “I have two roles in the club now, one as a player and the other to help the sporting directors. I don’t take the decisions like ‘we sign this player or we sign that player’ but if they ask me, I tell them my opinion. I’ll continue with this role because I think I can help but I (appreciate) the situation. I have to separate the roles. Sometimes I am a player, sometimes I can help in other ways.”

What Hernandez stresses is the extent of Escobar’s authority. He is in charge and in the dressing room, Hernandez will be like any of his team-mates, no more or less influential. “I know Sergio very well,” he says. “When I first came to this club with my partners, he came here to manage the second team. Now he’s come here again and with him, we always go in the same direction.

“He’s my new coach and I respect him and his work. Yes, I know him as a friend and we have a special relationship but I’m a player like every other player. We have to work like any player and coach. My other role, it’s not important to him.”

Castellon’s first league game of the new season takes place on August 28, away at Albacete. Hernandez gets a tingle from the thought of making his debut and if his fitness holds up, it goes without saying that Escobar will lean on him heavily. Castellon threw him into double training sessions last week but three years with Marcelo Bielsa prepared him for the physical drain. Hernandez is naturally fit and he prides himself on the fact that his career has never been blighted by serious injury.

His gift at Leeds was his ability to influence a game; to turn it, to win it, to make it his. He was player of the year for three seasons running in England and it was only in his final 12 months that Bielsa’s dependence on him began to wane. The reasons for that? There might have been more than one but Hernandez does not deny that a campaign in which he started only three league games was unfulfilling and part of his motivation for moving back to Spain, a year before his contract at Elland Road was due to end.

“I played good football at Valencia, in the Champions League, and in that time I went to the national team,” he says. “But the years at Leeds, with the goals and the assists, they’re the best statistics of my career. There’s no argument. And promotion to the Premier League, it was the best feeling of my life

“But last season was a difficult moment. I’d never lived through that situation before. In my career I’ve always played; more or less, of course, but I’ve always felt important and involved, playing with regularity. Last season was different, not what I know. It didn’t make me happy.”

What few people realised last season was that while Hernandez was in Leeds, his wife Mar and his two sons, Eric and Luca, went back to Spain without him. Mar was expecting their third child and there were acute concerns about the pregnancy. In June she gave birth to a girl, Nia, and Hernandez beams when he talks about her — “it’s the first girl in the family so something new for me” — but for a while the family were worried that they might lose the baby.

During the second half of the Premier League term, Hernandez stayed in England alone. “Our lifestyle as a family is always to be together,” he says. “We like to be at home and we like to do family things. But for the last five months of the season, they went to Spain because my wife was pregnant and there were problems. The best option was for her to go home. It wasn’t easy but we had no choice.

“The doctors told us there was a high percentage chance that we might lose the baby. That’s really difficult, no? I’m in Leeds and my family are in Spain. My wife was going into hospital every week to check the baby and I couldn’t be there. You are worried but I told myself to be calm and positive. My wife needed the support. She didn’t need nerves coming from me so I did what I could from a distance. And finally, the baby is here. All things are good.

“On my own I spent time on the computer with friends, playing games. I tried to focus on my job, not to lose that, because the more you think about what is happening with your family, the more difficult it is for you. Thinking too much is sometimes not good. I concentrated on football and gave it everything.”

Hernandez had been Bielsa’s diamond in the Championship, the source of so much inspiration. From a position on the right, almost a false seven, the midfielder was worth 12 goals and 12 assists in Bielsa’s first season as Leeds’ coach. In Bielsa’s second, Hernandez pulled the strings majestically during a pulsating run-in which sealed promotion to the Premier League. They were, in many respects, made for each other: two men in the latter stages of their careers tapping into a fresh supply of brilliance.

On the first day of last season, Hernandez started away at Liverpool. On the second weekend, he pulled his groin in the warm-up before a victory over Fulham and was absent for a month, losing his place in the team. But more telling was a 4-1 defeat by Leicester City in November which, as Hernandez sees it, drained Bielsa’s faith and trust in him. It was Hernandez’s second league start of the season and his last until the final match, at home to West Bromwich Albion, in May.

With 67 minutes gone against Leicester, Bielsa replaced Hernandez with Tyler Roberts. Leeds were 2-1 down and Hernandez had just hit the crossbar in a period of the game where the tide appeared to be turning against Leicester. On that particular evening, Bielsa’s side were wearing black armbands to mark the Armistice and the recent death of World Cup winner Nobby Stiles. As he left the pitch, Hernandez took his armband off and threw it into the empty stand beside him. On his way back to the dugout, he gave a water bottle a frustrated kick.

Bielsa saw neither display of dissent in real time but he was asked about them at the post-match press conference. Later that week, and without much warning, Hernandez was dropped for a visit to Crystal Palace. It was a temporary exclusion and he returned with two assists in a win over Newcastle the following month but his involvement was peripheral from there, reduced to occasional cameos off the bench.

It might have been that Bielsa was angry with him. There was also a sense as time went on of Bielsa and Leeds moving on from the era where so much seemed to depend on Hernandez’s skill. But either way, a remarkable career at Elland Road began heading for a subdued end. Before Christmas, Hernandez spoke to Leeds’ director of football, Victor Orta, to discuss his future and the way forward. Castellon were interested in taking him in the January window but Leeds wanted him to stay, at least until the season was over. Then they would talk again.

“In the Leicester game, my reaction wasn’t a good one,” Hernandez says. “The way I think, I always tell myself I can make a difference and make something happen. I don’t want to come off. It was hard not playing much but I still feel I did my best. There are two ways to be. Either you say ‘I deserve to play more’ or you can do your best every day in training. I think I did that.

“But after this game, I felt that the manager wasn’t happy with me. I saw signals that maybe he’d lost confidence in me. Before Christmas, I talked with the club, with Victor Orta, because I needed to understand how the club were thinking. They told me they wanted me to stay, that they needed me for the rest of the season, but everyone knows I was outside the team. It wasn’t easy.

“What happened (against Leicester), it’s not like me. Sometimes managers need to take decisions and I accept that. Bielsa took the decision (not to take him to Palace) and honestly, I respected that. I understood it. You could say that the punishment was the Crystal Palace game but from this game to the last game of the season, it could look like the punishment was very long. I don’t know for sure.”

Leeds revealed that Hernandez would be leaving the club before their last game against West Brom and Bielsa started him in it, describing him as an “excellent professional” and expressed “great sadness” at Hernandez’s departure. Playing against West Brom, Bielsa insisted, was a “homage he totally deserves”. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was Elland Road’s first match with a crowd for 14 months.

At this stage, Hernandez does not want to make too big a deal of his final year in Leeds. This is football, he admits, and the reality of last season is that Bielsa’s team were excellent throughout it. “I talked with Bielsa at times,” he says. “I respect him a lot and I have to say this — the situation last season doesn’t change my opinion of him. He’s a great manager and he changed so much at Leeds. He changed everything and you see what we achieved with him. It doesn’t matter what happened with me. I just felt I deserved to play more last season and I wasn’t happy with my role. That was my feeling.

“Bielsa is hard to work with. He demands a lot but the players understand that if they follow him, if they do what he wants and suffer on the pitch, the results will be there. He changed my style and he improved me, especially in the first year. So I repeat — I won’t change my opinion about him.”

How did Bielsa change Hernandez? How did Bielsa take a player in his mid-30s and extract the form of his life?

Hernandez has spoken before about his defensive evolution, his education in off-the-ball work which is so integral to Bielsa’s tactics, but in an attacking sense he explains how he was taught new ways of finding space and using it when Leeds were on the attack. Bielsa set out with Hernandez as a right-winger but Hernandez would drift and feint into the middle of the pitch, a nightmare to track and pick up. Space between the lines was where Hernandez could hurt teams and Bielsa worked on helping him occupy it.

There is no finer example of this than Hernandez’s iconic winning goal at Swansea City, the 89th-minute finish which finally tipped the automatic promotion battle Leeds’ way. As Leeds broke from one end of the pitch to the other, Hernandez held his nerve and waited patiently between Swansea’s defence and midfield, using that gap and the time it gave him to measure his run and stab a shot in off the far post. Everything peaked for him that day, the culmination of four years with the club.

Last month, a year on from his goal, Hernandez sat and watched replays of it. Footballers are different in the way they process emotional moments. Some like to carry them with them forever. Some find that the sensation fades quickly. Hernandez says he can still feel the buzz, the euphoria of his finish trickling in. The ball nestled in the net and Leeds were up. Even a club as ill-fated as they had been for 16 years could see the finishing line coming.

The mural of him painted in Leeds is of Hernandez wheeling away to celebrate, his shirt off and a GPS vest covering his chest. “I’ve seen the painting,” he says. “What can you say? I can’t believe a picture like that is in the city centre in Leeds. I can only thank the people who did it. Maybe I deserve it, maybe not. I would never ask for it but I am so grateful.

“The Swansea goal, it still feels amazing. One year later I watched it again and every time I see it I think ‘wow!’. It was a moment where everything happens, where everything is in front of you. I can never forget it or forget the feeling. I really can’t describe how it was.” In Leeds they had words for it: pure bliss. A goal from heaven delivered by the club’s best signing in almost two decades.

Hernandez came to Leeds in search of promotion. He joined Castellon last week with exactly the same remit. There is a tradition at Castellon that when success comes their way, supporters jump in the fountain on the roundabout outside the stadium. Will Hernandez do the same if promotion happens this season? “Yeah,” he says. “For sure. I only have one thing in my head, like at Leeds. Get promoted.”

Some day he knows that this will all be behind him. Some day his career will be over. “It will come but I don’t think any player is ever ready for that decision,” he says. “I can never be ready for it because football is my life. It’s been my life from the age of five. OK, I went to school but for the last 31 years, football has been everything. I feel good so I keep going.

“The supporters at Castellon, I compare them to Leeds. They have the same spirit. They are there in the good times and there even more in the bad. I’m a lucky man to be able to say I played for both. What I received in Leeds, it means so much. You cannot always hope to feel love from the fans. If you come away from football with this, you can be happy forever.”
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Fantastic article Cjay :tup:

Pablo knew he had done wrong, I still think Marcelo should have been more forgiving especially as his family had gone back to Spain, a traumatic time for one of our greatest players of the modern era.
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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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Pablo still doing it

That's how your No.10 should be putting the ball in the net, not straight at the keeper, Absolute precision from Pablo.


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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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There are players we'll miss and there are players we'll REALLY MISS !

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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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BGwhite wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 8:09 am There are players we'll miss and there are players we'll REALLY MISS !

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Pablo is class BG, still better than some we have in our squad including the outgoing Costa.

Manure didn't put an age limit on Cavani & now Ronaldo.
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Re: Pablo Hernandez still knows where the net is!

Post by BGwhite »

Should've kept him on as player/coach

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Re: Pablo Hernandez

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1964white wrote: Sat Sep 04, 2021 8:16 am Pablo is class BG, still better than some we have in our squad including the outgoing Costa.

Manure didn't put an age limit on Cavani & now Ronaldo.
I don't think Bielsa likes the aging superstar thing.

To be fair, in any analysis of the greatest managers, he'll be in he conversation and Solskjaer won't.
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