Carla Pereyra (1987) married Diego Pablo Simeone (1970), technical director of Atlético de Madrid in 2019. And it is not that this is far from the definitive detail of her biography, but it was an event that changed her life. Cholo Simeone is the highest paid coach in the world, 43 million euros per season, and she inevitably entered the women's underworld, a social category as vilified as it is envied. “I am not a footballer's wife, but a coach's wife. And it is not exactly the same, ”she clarifies as soon as this interview begins.
We meet at his magnificent house in La Finca, a luxury urbanization in Pozuelo de Alcorcón, whose mansions designed by the firm of the architect Joaquín Torres have been a refuge for illustrious residents such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Alejandro Sanz or Borja Thyssen. It is one of the most suffocating summer afternoons in Madrid. Her two daughters, Francesca and Valentina, have gone to the movies to see Barbie, and Carla is preparing to work on this cover. She asks her how many dreams she has already seen fulfilled and she is surprisingly honest: “I am clear that I have overcome them all. The years and the imagination in Argentina were not enough for me to dream of so much”.
He was born in 1987 in a working-class neighborhood of Paraná. In her family, she learned the value of work and to always have a goal, a strength to get out of bed in the morning. At the age of 17, she went to Milan alone to work as a model. A hard stage where she was rejected many times. She arrived in Madrid, passed through New York where she was an art dealer, and then returned to Madrid. It was then that she met Simeone in a happy coincidence in a restaurant that Carla has recounted many times. “I got up to go to the bathroom and he followed me. I knew perfectly well who he was. When I left there, he was still there, I told him: 'Congratulations! What a good job you do!' 'I'm waiting for you', she answered me. 'Look, I'm from Paraná, I'm Argentine. Don't tell me the story,' I replied.
We don't know if he told the story or not, but a childhood of shared cartoons, a common heritage of jokes and songs from adolescence, movies and words made them inseparable. “The lexicon -says Carla- is important, and we cultivate that like nobody else, Argentines. I, for example, hate abbreviations, what is that to write why with an x and a k? No, write the whole word! I like people who express themselves well in their language. Language is the most beautiful thing we have to tell our story, ”she says.
His first times in Madrid were "hard". Things happened that she prefers to forget. “I shared a flat with many colleagues, like in a coliving, and today because of the twists and turns of life, I have those apartments for students and I know girls who come to Madrid with the same enthusiasm that I did, and the first thing that comes out is to help them. I believe that life is always a turn. Many good women helped me."
How do you recognize good people? Would you say you have a good eye?
It is true that I have it tuned and sharp. I have a mixture of good luck and a good eye. I am increasingly selective and believe that less is more. Let's say I want to have my people close and everyone else there, a little further away.
What would you say are your great virtues?
One of them is knowing how to surround myself with people who bring out the best in me. The other is not to dwell on the bad things. And I've had a pretty bad time. Some months I had no money for rent.
How important is money in your life?
I respect money because it helps us have a better life. It gives peace of mind. It is not the same to go to sleep knowing that the next day you will not be able to pay the rent than to go to bed with the illusion that you have a nice project waiting for you where you can put all your energy. I think that's the difference between having money or not. Or at least that's how I've experienced it. I went from having that feeling of "I can't get there", "I can't" to thinking from tranquility and creativity, and I believe that all human beings should have the opportunity to create and work from the peace that comes from having an economic mattress.
What is it like to be the person in your family who has done well, the one who can help others? Do you enjoy that position?
When I return to Paraná I am the same girl as always, I develop a mental dissociation, as if I had never been in Spain. I'm at home, I drink mate with my parents…. I don't know if people expect a lot from me, but I enjoy being the person who can generate illusion in others, help them fulfill their dreams, their projects. If we don't help our family, who are we going to help?
What are you teaching your daughters?
The values of my family, which is my pillar. Humble and hardworking people, with very little ego. Their lives have not changed either, not even me because I have never stopped having my feet on the ground. Although it is true that everything around me has changed, my essence remains the same. And this is what I try to do with my daughters: strengthen family values, humility, work so that, regardless of their circumstance, they are good people because with that you get everywhere.
Are you an optimistic person?
I think you have optimism or not, and maybe some people can educate it. In my case I have always been very positive. I don't usually collapse in the face of difficulties. That's why I think I've changed jobs so much because if a door closed and a window opened I would go through that window... That hardens you, and there was a moment when that hardness began to play against me because when I already I was in a safe place, I was still armored and on the defensive. It has been a long path of growth and self-awareness.
Why have you decided to open your business if you no longer needed to work to live?
There are things that one never loses, and from a very young age I sought my life. You don't have to stay still. The type of person that irritates me the most is the one who has no goals, the one who doesn't move, the one who doesn't live for something. Hey, that "I get up every day for my children" is very good, but there has to be something more.
[Carla is the sole administrator of the company Carpesim S.L. dedicated to "the purchase, promotion, construction, rehabilitation, sale, lease, conservation and exploitation of all types of farms and buildings". Since 2020 she has been awarded millionaire operations].
Of the world that surrounds soccer, what do you like the least?
I have met very nice people, I have one or two good friends in this world, but it was by chance. [It is believed that Carla was that mysterious friend with whom Shakira went to the beaches of the Dominican Republic in the middle of the emotional storm with Gerard Piqué]. There is another more frivolous part that generates a lot of gossip and from which I feel further away. But you have to put yourself in the shoes of most of those guys who come from humble families and suddenly they have arrived, they earn money very quickly and they are ostentatious. You have to understand them because changes, even good ones, are difficult to manage.
Why don't you cultivate the aesthetic that we all identify as a woman or a soccer player's girlfriend?
Perhaps because I come from the world of fashion and Argentina is a very elegant country. I think I have educated the eye there. I try not to look like anyone, my style references are others... people who don't want to pretend what they are not. But, I insist, you have to know where people come from to understand where they are, what they say and what they project. You have to empathize more and judge less.
What do you do when things are said about you that are not true?
I read many bad things about myself, that if I am very thin, that if I have million-dollar businesses, if this, if the other... When the wave moves a lot, one stays still, and it passes over or under you... there are what to surf I understand that everyone has to sell their own... I forgive and move on.
