A matter of head

“The key is to work and be focused,” explains the Madrid goalkeeper, today in the ranks of Girona.

His father was a goalkeeper. His grandfather too. And so his uncle, his great-uncle, his great-grandfather, his cousin… Lucas García had the path marked out. “But the truth is that I don’t know why I’m a goalkeeper,” explains the Madrid goalkeeper. “Nobody told me anything. From the first day I fell in love with that position, perhaps because it is the most special on the field. Being a goalkeeper means having to suffer alone and celebrate alone, and that demands a lot from you on a mental level. But when your team has been locked in his area for 20 minutes and you finally manage to catch the ball, then you hear the sighs of relief from all your teammates, and that is priceless.”

Born in Leganés, Lucas was signed by Atlético Madrid at the age of nine. With the ‘colchoneros’ he did not manage to play as he wanted to, which led him to join Getafe. He was 12 years old, but his adventure with the ‘azulones’ lasted only one season. It was then that he decided to go to Marcet to get his career back on track.

“Being a goalkeeper means having To suffer alone and celebrate alone. It’S demandING on a mental level”

Lucas arrived in Barcelona in the summer of 2018. “Marcet helped me to clearly define my goalkeeper profile. At the beginning, in my first season, we focused on developing my strength points. Then we began to polish other aspects as well. The key is to work and keep your head focused. That’s the most important thing, because there are a lot of talented people who don’t make it in the end. If you don’t have the right attitude, others end up getting ahead of you.”

It was precisely this attitude that led Girona to sign Lucas for three seasons. “At the beginning of my last year at Marcet, I knew that to make the leap I had to achieve the individual goals that the coaching staff had set for me. Together with my coaches and my analysts I managed to polish those details. From there, the sports director arranged tests for me with various teams, and in the end I was able to choose where to go.”

Lucas will play his first season as a U-18 player in the Division de Honor. “I have managed to take the step, it was what I was looking for and I am very happy,” says the goalkeeper, who is clear that he will have to continue progressing if he wants to settle in professional football: “I want to learn, but also to compete and to earn my place at Girona based on good performance and results.”

All this without neglecting studies. Lucas has just finished his first year of Baccalaureate and, since he’s very good at Mathematics, he intends to study a career in industrial engineering. If both in the classrooms and on the football fields he will keep getting the same grades he has obtained so far, then in the future he will be able to choose not only the job that he likes the most, but also the team in which to play.