The Spanish specialist summed up his eight years as a fitness coach at Lokomotiv Kuban, shared his most cherished memories of that time, and explained why Krasnodar will forever remain in his heart.
- Can you tell us where do you go?
- Not really. I mean, still I cannot say the team, but obviously, let's say it's a bigger challenge for me. If not, I would never think about leaving Loko. I was ready to be here many more years, but it happened that I got the opportunity to join the top level in Europe and we were thinking about it, me and my family, but in the end we thought it was the moment to take this challenge. (When this interview was prepared to be published, BC Dubai announced Garcia's arrival – note by the club's press service.)
- Who will do your work then?
- This I don't know. I suppose this will be a decision of Andrey Vladimirovich Vidishchev and our head coach to decide who is going to be the person.
- Which players showed the best progress in physical conditions during your years here?
- The most recent example is Vsevolod Ishchenko. He had a situation with two injuries last year. So we decided to use this period in a positive way and focused on his body improvement. AndI can say that despite his age he is a super professional player totally focused on what he wants to achieve. He did an excellent job, so his progress was huge. Anton Kvitkovskikh is a super high level professional regarding his body. Kirill Temirov had a very good evolution during the last years, mainly in things that are off the court, like recovery, nutrition, some other certain things that a basketball player needs. It's not enough to get physically better only. A lot of other things affect your form, and Kirill did a great job in these aspects. One of the things that I'm proud of is that we have created a method or you may say approach or at least an atmosphere where young players understand that once they arrive to the first team they need to do all our demands correctly since the very beginning. I would also like to thank the management and the president who believed in me 8 seasons ago. It was a big challenge for me, and I gave all my best to Lokomotiv Kuban during these years, and I'm really proud of this period of my life. Thanks to Loko, not only my professional career improved, I also got a very beautiful wife and my family that will be with me for all of my life. and this is something that I really appreciate. So thanks a lot for this chance, and I don’t want to say goodbye because you never know how life will go on, so maybe it's just see you later.
- During these eight years, what are the most memorable moments for you?
- Of Krasnodar I have a lot of things to remember because I met my wife in Moscow but I married my wife in Krasnodar, I asked her to be my wife in Krasnodar, our official papers are done in Krasnodar, my sons Mateo and Marco were born here, so Krasnodar will always follow us all of our life. Plus we have a lot of great friends here. During difficult moments like for example Covid we were not able to go to Spain and my first son was just recently born, but we had the support from a lot of friends from inside and outside Loko. So for us it's a big part of our life. Also, for me, as I'm Spanish, the weather here is the closest to what we have in Madrid. A lot of people usually ask if it is cold here, and I say no, where I live the weather is totally different. And the attitude that the people have towards living is quite Mediterranean, and I enjoy it so much.
- During these eight years, what are the most memorable moments for you?
- For sure one of them is this bronze medal, I'm super proud of what we did, honestly. I don't care about the metal of the medal, I care what is behind it. You can be champion but just feel like okay it's one more title. I think what is special about this bronze medal is that we were in a very tough situation, losing 0-2. In 99% of the situations people will have quit and say okay that was enough. But our players showed an unbelievable character, which means it was the mentality that our head coach put on the head of our players from day one. So, I'm super proud and I don't care if it was not gold or silver. I totally love the words that our president told to the team inside the locker room when we won the medal in St. Petersburg: this bronze tastes like gold, I completely agree. The other moment for sure it's my other medal with Loko which was silver. Okay the taste of the finals was not amazing because we ended up losing 1-4, but I must remember we had a chance two minutes to the end of the second game we were winning by eight. We could have been 2-0 and that would have been a totally different story, but this is sports. Anyway, I will always remember when we beat CSKA in semi-finals game seven overtime. I've never felt something similar to that moment in my life. I remember I decided to wait for the players outside the court one by one on the way to the locker room and how everybody was hugging each other when we were meeting. That's a feeling that even now I have goosebumps when I remember. So, those will be for sure my two best moments regarding basketball in Loko.
- Do you want to say something to Loko fans?
- For sure! I can only say thank you for all the great moments that we got together. You know, when we were going to play Game 4 of the bronze series, I was a little bit worried because I normally like to check if it's going to be a lot of people or not so much to understand if I have to push the players a little bit harder on the warm-up. And I knew that on Tuesday there would not be so many people, but man I can tell you that in some moment it was feeling like a full gym, and the most important thing was that everybody believed that the team could achieve this and was pushing hard. And that was not only this time, I've been feeling this energy a lot of times during these 8 seasons in Loko, and it's something special. You know, everything that we do here every day, it's for the fans. If fans are not there, our job makes no sense. But what I really like about this place is that it doesn't matteif it's two thousand, three thousand or a full arena, you always feel that they came to support our team. And to me that's what I will always be thankful for.
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