2nd part of article.
Blur your eyes a touch when watching Independiente and it’s not so difficult to imagine you’re watching Manchester City — and not just because Ramirez himself could expect to be a finalist in any Pep Guardiola lookalike contest.
They have a goalkeeper who is happy to step out of his penalty area and start moves. They have full-backs who are comfortable slotting into midfield positions. The wingers stay high and wide, stretching the play. There are even, to borrow from Guardiola’s lexicon, a pair of “free eights” who roam between the lines, probing for openings. The ball is occasionally pinged to the far side of the field but otherwise, it stays on the floor.
Ramirez accepts the comparison but insists that his approach is influenced more by those with whom he has worked closely. “For those of us who like the possession game, obviously Guardiola is an important name, a point of orientation for our footballing compasses,” he says. “But I don’t know how Guardiola works. I only see how his team play. The inspiration has come from the people I’ve had around me — people who have helped to build me up, offered me an idea about how to go about being a coach.”
While Ramirez got his start at Las Palmas and then had a brief spell in Greek youth football, he cites his time at the Aspire Academy in Dubai as his most formative experience before he arrived in Ecuador. There, he met his mentor, Roberto Olabe, who is now director of football at Real Sociedad. Over the course of six years, during which he coached the under-12, under-13, under-16 and under-17 sides, his philosophy took shape.
“Roberto had this way of seeing the game as it relates to the player, to space, to the opponent,” Ramirez explains. “I arrived in Qatar unable to see that. By sitting with Roberto and chatting for many, many hours, I was able to start to see the game in a totally different manner.”
The chance to go to Ecuador came in 2018. Independiente have a link with Aspire, who recommended Ramirez for the job of academy coordinator. He didn’t think twice, but the decision to step up and manage the first team when coach Ismael Rescalvo left the club a year later was trickier. Ramirez liked working with young players. He did not harbour a burning ambition to move up to senior football.
Still, it felt like too good an opportunity to turn down. “I had time during that year in the academy to get to know the club, to get to know the people behind the project,” he says. “I knew their vision, and what they wanted. I understood that I could be calm and secure in the knowledge that I was going to have stability at this club.
“What I saw during the nine seasons I was at Las Palmas — a European club who spent a long time in the first division — was a third-world set-up. Independiente have a first-world set-up — a structure and a vision that is very different to other clubs in Ecuador and to most of the rest of South America, too.”
On a practical level, Ramirez must work within certain constraints. “It’s a very responsible economic model,” he explains. “There aren’t funds for big signings, because there’s a salary cap that the club doesn’t want to go past. They want to prioritise the academy and the promotion of academy players to the first team, even knowing that doing so has certain sporting costs.
On a practical level, Ramirez must work within certain constraints. “It’s a very responsible economic model,” he explains. “There aren’t funds for big signings, because there’s a salary cap that the club doesn’t want to go past. They want to prioritise the academy and the promotion of academy players to the first team, even knowing that doing so has certain sporting costs.
“Throughout the club, teams use the same method of training and style of play. There is also a very effective scouting network. Right now, Independiente are the No 1 club in Ecuador for scouting young players: the best talents in the country play in our youth teams. We try to get players into the first team and the idea is that later we can sell them to bigger clubs. So players leave, players come in from the academy, those players are sold… and that’s how the club remains sustainable.”
This suits Ramirez, who already knows all of the youngsters well, down to the ground. Four of the players who started the Sudamericana final against Argentine side Colon came through the academy system. The Ecuador national team have also started to benefit from the production line and Ramirez says there is growing respect for the club’s achievements on the continent. “For Ecuador, Independiente are an example of how to do things,” he says. “It’s a club that don’t have a lot of supporters, but there has been a big reaction across the country. There’s a lot of admiration: people can be fans of another club, but they’re also supporters of Independiente.”
Much of that owes to Ramirez’s style of football. He has won admirers far beyond Ecuador, too: Palmeiras were desperate to secure his services earlier this year and they aren’t the only Brazilian club to have been in contact. Ramirez, though, says he was not overly tempted.
“Let’s put all our cards on the table: I’m just starting out professionally,” he says. “I understand that I wouldn’t have had the guarantee that I have here at Independiente del Valle. I know that a bad result isn’t going to change anything about the project at Independiente, about the vision that the club have and the trust they have in me.
“In Brazil that wasn’t going to be possible. The immediacy, the focus on results, and above all the lack of time to train… it would have been impossible for me to build a foundation for a project. Everything is immediate there: every two or three days, you’ve got to get a result, and if you don’t get that result, you’re out on the street.
“Especially for my system of play, and how I understand the game. However big the club, the circumstances wouldn’t be there due to the immediacy that pervades Brazilian football.”
He has had a few phone calls from this side of the Atlantic, too, and admits the prospect of testing himself in Europe is more appealing. “I’m not obsessed with returning, but it is attractive because the competition there is so difficult. The level of coaches… I know it will push me to new limits. It’ll be a headache to work out how to compete in each match. That’s what motivates me.
“I have to be careful because I don’t think my way of playing would be well suited to just any kind of club. My way of understanding football needs a particular context, which not all clubs have. So I have to be very sure before I take the next step.”
You don’t need a crystal ball to know that his time will come. In the more immediate future, though, there is business to attend to. Tonight, Independiente are in Uruguay for the second leg of their Libertadores last-16 tie against Nacional. The first leg ended 0-0, but goodness knows how: the Ecuadorians had 78 per cent possession and a frankly ridiculous 32 shots. More of the same in Uruguay and they will surely progress to the quarter-finals, where a glamour meeting with River Plate could await.
Which isn’t bad at all for an unknown Spanish youth coach, right? “I never imagined this,” he says with a glint in his eye. “I think everything that has come my way is a gift from football. And a gift from life.”