A five-time winner of the Champions League and three times in the Spanish League posts a video on Instagram. He is seen going up and down some sort of podium, or working with a medicine ball, or doing various physical exercises. This is the routine of Francisco Alarcón Suárez, known in football as Isco. He has not yet turned 31 (he will do so on April 21) and is unemployed. "While the noise continues outside, inside we continue with enthusiasm," says the player as his motto.
But not even the super agent Jorge Mendes was able to find him a team before the general blind of the winter market closed. He came to travel to Berlin and passed the medical examination with the Union, the revelation team of the Bundesliga, but at the last moment the Germans said that they could not go beyond the limits of the club and backed down on the pact they had reached. The player was left composed and with nothing.
Isco returned to Seville, where he has his current residence, waiting to resolve his future somewhere, with the help of Mendes and also his father, closely linked to the negotiations throughout the footballer's career. He has been associated with the American MLS, with Turkish soccer, with Villarreal when Coquelin was injured, with Mourinho's Roma, who had until Friday to sign a player without a team, and even with Flamengo from Rio. An unsolvable puzzle.
The one from Arroyo de la Miel is still waiting for his destination and continues without playing. His last game was on November 13, 2022 against the modest Velarde of the Preferred Regional in the Copa del Rey. He did not wear the Sevilla shirt again, who signed him urgently in the summer and with whom he only played 19 games and scored one goal. The dismissal of his main supporter, Julen Lopetegui, the coach who also gave him command of the national team field, was the beginning of the end for Isco at Pizjuán. Jorge Sampaoli began giving him a court but his football and the Andalusian's did not fully agree and his light went out quickly.
The discussion with the plenipotentiary sports director of Sevilla, Monchi, in a training session in which he would have thrown it in his face that he did not want him at the club and that he had only come for Lopetegui, was the straw that broke the camel's back. Therefore, he has not dressed short in a game for more than three months.
Always questioned, especially at Real Madrid, due to his lack of depth and sometimes accused of not taking care of himself excessively in this field, Isco has been working for a year and a half with private physical trainers, who are currently the only ones who They control their set-up. “He has a speed of 30 meters that he did not have and a speed of 50 that he did not have, he trains twice a day. We do strength, speed, muscle-building work. A part also with the ball. And some nights he also goes running to burn fat, ”Rodrigo Carretero, Isco's physical preparation supervisor, explains to La Vanguardia, together with Dani Jiménez, within the company CrysDyaz
“He is at his best body fat percentage in the last year and a half. Contrary to what one might think and, looking at the data that comes to me weekly about his preparation, he is in remarkable physical condition. I spoke with him a few days ago and he is happy, although he is waiting to find a team”, adds Carretero.
Since the footballer is in Seville and his coaches in Madrid, they are in contact at a distance. "Some of the sessions he does in streaming with us and others we send them to him by mail."
The same company also oversees his nutrition and nutrition, another of Isco's workhorses during his career. "Now he is in such good physical condition that he does not need to go on a special diet and he can indulge himself."
But it is one thing to be physically fit and another to be ready to compete. In the summer, the footballer did a specific six-week training session when his future was being decided and then he had to do another two with the Sevilla physical trainer to try to reach the level of his teammates. "In terms of physical performance, he was fine during his time at Pizjuán," defends Carretero.
But how has a footballer with so many titles with Madrid and internationally had and still has so many difficulties finding a team? The talented midfielder placed himself in the hands of Gestifute, Jorge Mendes' agency, in May 2022.
He already saw coming that his long stage of nine seasons in Madrid was coming to an end and opted for a superlative representative. His fees at the Bernabeu were around 8 million euros and his goal was to find a club that would pay him about 4. He had offers during the summer but none came close to that cache.
In the end, almost desperately, he had to lower his claims and signed for two seasons with Sevilla. Added fixed and variable in the total of both courses, he could collect around 5 million, but he returned to work with Lopetegui, with whom he had already met briefly in Madrid and, above all, in the national team. Of course, perhaps at his best moment, in the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Lopetegui said goodbye with the entire expedition already ready in Krasnodar because the transfer of the coach to Madrid came to light. The one that had to be his tournament was not either and he returned to the routine of the Bernabeu, where he alternated flashes of class with prolonged periods of substitutions. In Seville he only lasted four months and was dispatched without pain or glory.
At a phenomenal age and even more so with his quality and knowledge of the game, Isco's blackout is huge. His market value has dropped from 90 million to 9 million, according to Transfermarkt. Will it stop his fall?
