Recently, life long football fan Abel Rodriguez left his home in Los Angeles to travel to Madrid on the off chance he might meet Jose Mourinho, but what happened next was truly unbelievable.
By Adrian Collins
From cleaning the floors of the Metro in Los Angeles to becoming Real Madrid’s kitman for the biggest game of the year in the Champions League against Manchester United, Abel Rodriguez had a pretty amazing few weeks at the beginning of March.
For years Rodriguez has been taking his holidays in the summer when Real Madrid travel to their pre-season camp in America and helping them out by collecting footballs, setting up for training and generally lending a hand however he can for the Spanish giants.
This year, however, he saved his money and took his holidays to travel to Europe and try to get a glimpse of a Clasico, something he’d hoped to do since he was a child, so he pinpointed the game on March 2nd as his best chance to get involved, seeing as, with Mourinho likely to leave soon, some of the current staff might recognise him when he arrived.
In fact, that’s exactly what he was banking on, since he knew no one there and also had no tickets to the game or a hotel booked for his stay.
When he eventually arrived to Madrid, he headed straight to their Valdebebas training ground and, as he told Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated, he sat on the roadside in the freezing cold for five hours because security wouldn’t let him in.
At this point, his luck turned, because as Jose Mourniho was heading home, he recognised him sitting outside from all the time he spend with the team in LA, and came up to him asking what he was doing.
When Rodriguez told him why he was there, Mourinho jumped into action, sorted him a hotel, got him tickets to the next Clasico, and told him to be at training the next morning to help out.
From there, the whole thing snowballed, and the night before the Clasico, Mourinho told him he’d be travelling with the team as a kitman to their game against Manchester United. Abel couldn’t believe it, and began to cry and offered to pay, but Mourinho told him “when you’re with me in Europe you don’t pay for s**t’.
Mourinho organised it for Rodriguez to go with the team to Old Trafford, where he met Diego Maradona and a few of the Manchester United squad, manager Alex Ferguson, and fellow-Mexican Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez, who also gave him a signed shirt after the game.
He can even be seen in the background of this shot (above) of the players in the tunnel as they get ready to come out for the game.
The whole story is truly brilliant, and Rodriguez, who wasn’t paid for his work, still had no contact details for Mourniho to say thank you, so he released his story to Sports Illustrated as his way of showing his gratitude.
Hat-tip Neil Sherwin and Cathal Woogan on Twitter for this one
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