Super Bowl Sunday at the stadium is an experience like no other. You arrive seven hours early and they pass like a sigh
Excerpt from '100 Stories, 100 Yards'
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Jordi Brugnani (31) tells me:
–I was born in June 1992, the day the Olympic torch arrived in Catalonia. Do you know what that means?
–¿...?
–That I am predestined to be an Olympian. I know.
–Give me more arguments...
–My father, Peter Brugnani, was an Olympian in bobsleigh in Sarajevo '84. And he was also the first coach of the famous Jamaican bobsleigh team, the one that was to go to Albertville '92. The thing is that, when those Winter Games started, my father couldn't go with the Jamaicans.
-And so?
–I was going to be born. My mother, Anna, told him: 'You stay or you stay.' I don't think my father is going to be the only Olympian in the family.
–And how are you going to avoid it?
–I plan to be an Olympian in flag football in Los Angeles 2028. I have played European and World Championships...
(...)
Come on, order, the conversation wanders: we are supposed to have come to talk about American football.
Jordi Brugnani plays for the Barcelona Dragons.
Es defensive back.
–And where does American football come from to you? Couldn't he play conventional football, like all children?
–At school I was always the weirdo. Starting with my last name. Nobody knew how to pronounce it. I was Brugnani, the one in American football, just like my brother, Cesare, who also plays for the Dragons. Or Claudia, our sister, who also plays flag football.
–¿...?
–We didn't have PlayStation. The three of us played two sports, so we had busy afternoons. My father was clear, there was a reason he ran a gym.
–But how did you discover this sport?
–My father took us to watch games in Montjuïc. I was five years old when I saw Champi (Iván Imbernón) undressing and throwing his clothes into the stands. The Dragons had won the 1997 World League. I don't remember the game, but I do remember that scene.
–And don't you get scared when you see a guy who is two meters tall and weighs 120 kilos coming at you?
–I pray and that's it.
–¿...?
–You must do your job. And I certainly don't like my team pointing fingers at me. That's worse than getting hit. You can't get scared and leave the team down. It is what it is and you go.
–And why are you a defender?
–I have been in attack and defense, but I am more productive at the back. And I don't like being hit, I admit that.
–And how did you get to the Dragons?
(And after the question, an aside: in other times, Jordi Brugnani had played in Germany and Finland; he has also won three Spanish league titles).
–I signed up a few years ago for a Gladiators Football project. I didn't know they were going to be the new Dragons. When I found out, I was shocked. In the first game, in 2021 against Stuttgart, I started crying. They had painted that field in Reus as if it were played in the NFL, my parents were in the stands... In the second year, we went to the Rhein Fire Düsseldorf field and I was amazed. There were 12,000 spectators. It was surreal. My brother Cesare was with me. I told him: 'Now we are the protagonists of this story.' We are TV and we have to entertain people. And I'll tell you something.
–What will he tell me?
–American football is very similar to being a tattoo artist.
(He tells me because he is a professional tattoo artist: he runs Patch Factory, in Sant Vicenç dels Horts).
-Because?
–When you tattoo someone, you are leaving a mark that will remain and that is a responsibility as important as intercepting a rival or preventing a teammate from getting injured.
And now we start rambling about the profession of tattooing (“when I was 18, I was always drawing and my father suggested I turn the hobby into a profession”), once again we ignore American football, how many clubs this man touches.
(After several courses in Reus and Terrassa, the Dragons have moved to Badalona; the European League of Football starts at the end of May).
