At the end of Aitor Karanka’s debut at the Santiago Bernabéu, he bounded up the stairs four at a time and into the dressing room, where he found the Spanish Super Cup in the middle of the floor. His opening night had delivered a 4-1 destruction of Barcelona, a perfect introduction to football’s greatest rivalry, and his first trophy. This was huge, or so he thought. His new teammates, though, had just left the cup there and headed for a shower. “That day, I realised what Real Madrid is,” he says.
It was 1997, he had been there only a week but already saw that the demands were relentless. Karanka was reminded of that repeatedly as a player who won everything and later as a coach during the clásico’s peak, when “the world stopped to watch”. That day he recalls: “I stood looking at the trophy, at them. It was like: ‘OK, good, but what really matters is the other one.’” Soon he had that too, Madrid claiming the European Cup after 32 years. “Manolo Sanchís held on to it like a child. Tears in his eyes, he said: ‘One day you’ll realise how hard this is, what it means.’”
Sanchís, whose father, Manuel, had won Madrid’s last European Cup, was the captain, in his 15th season. Karanka starts laughing. “I said: ‘Bloody hell, Manolo, it’s not so hard; I won it in one year.’ No one expected it – Juventus gave us their champagne, we hadn’t taken any – and it changed everything. We won it again two years later: ‘Manolo, you were lying to me!’” A third followed, a new era opened.
Which makes it sound easier, smoother, than it was. The pressure was intense: Karanka talks about the psychological impact of a silent Bernabéu, players who couldn’t handle it. He tells the story of the morning after being heavily defeated by Valencia when a man in the street told him to his face how bad he was. “My mum says: ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ ‘What can I say? We lost 6-2.’ The guy actually said sorry. I said: ‘No, it’s true.’ When you join a club like Madrid, the mental side is fundamental, so are the people around you. It can be hard.”
Unless, it seems, you’re Jude Bellingham. Karanka’s eyes light up. He talks about everything from Athletic Club to Madrid, going from Middlesbrough to Birmingham to Nottingham; about helping players develop, video sessions with Adama Traoré, and relationships with Matty Cash, Oscar Gloukh and Bryan Zaragoza, Ben Gibson, Patrick Bamford and Adam Forshaw. There is fondness there, yet few names elicit enthusiasm quite like that of the 20-year-old whose Bernabéu debut he attended, telling his daughter not to worry: not only was the goal coming, he would catch it on his phone for her. Now comes the Englishman’s first clásico, one Karanka, 50, who is working as a pundit having left his last job at Maccabi Tel Aviv in June, believes he will take in his stride.
“For everyone in Spain, Bellingham’s mentality has surprised, but not for me,” he says. “Because I’m lucky enough to know him … and unlucky enough not to have worked with him by two weeks.
“People said things like: ‘But he’s young, he’s English …’ What? Steve McManaman didn’t succeed? David Beckham didn’t? Macca’s numbers put him among Madrid’s greats. But Macca is Macca: ‘No worries.’ 24/7, 365, laughing, happy. Maybe that personality meant not getting the recognition he deserves, but I’d have him in my team always. And what Jude is doing is not chance.
“When I joined Birmingham, I started watching videos. I said to the chief executive, Xuandong [Ren]: ‘This kid? Sold. Noooo. Let me have him for pre-season at least! When the Dortmund move was agreed, Birmingham still needed three points to survive. Jude says: ‘Until we’re safe, I keep playing.’ At 17. Any other kid, it’s: ‘No thanks, lads.’ But he says: ‘This is my team, my city, I’m not abandoning them.’
“He has a great family, that’s vital. I met Jobe [now a midfielder at Sunderland]. He was 14. ‘You must be Jude’s brother. They tell me you’re better than him.’ He looks at me and says: ‘Better? No.’” Karanka applies the comic pause Jobe did. “‘Much better’.”
Can he be? “Well, it’s getting harder by the day,” Karanka says, laughing. “Not because Jobe’s not good but because Jude just keeps getting better. That personality is there in both of them, the balance. ‘Nineteen, 20 years old? Doesn’t matter. I’m me.’ He’s robbing the ball, passing, running, scoring. If you add intelligence, talent and personality … well, it’s Jude Bellingham.”
And Jude Bellingham is La Liga’s best player going into Saturday’s clásico in Barcelona. “Jude’s 20, Rodrygo is 22, Vinícius 23. Look at Barcelona: Lamine Yamal, Pedri, Gavi, [Alejandro] Balde, all young,” Karanka continues. “Maybe they have less of a feeling for what this game is but they’ll see.”
One thing’s for sure: it won’t be as fierce as when Karanka was assistant to José Mourinho and the greatest rivalry of all brought together the best two clubs, managers and players in the world. “It was … intense,” he says.
Karanka was handed responsibility to appear before the media. “People saw it as a marrón (a drag), me having to take the hits, but I didn’t ever face them when the team had lost,” he says. “I did 89 press conferences. It was Cristiano, Messi, Spain’s world champions. José came and found a way to compete. It was a privilege to experience. A marrón? Representing José Mourinho and Real Madrid is no marrón.”
Instead, it helped form him, a coaching career in the making. Ten years ago this month Karanka began at Middlesbrough, where he insists clásico lessons were applied.
“I had never thought of being a coach,” he says. “Fernando Hierro convinced me to do my badges then said: ‘Come and work for the federation, but you’re not getting a penny.’ First with Spain’s Under-16s – Saúl, [Gerard] Deulofeu, Jesé, Raphinha – then the under-17s with [Álvaro] Morata, Isco, Sergi Roberto, Koke, [Iker] Muniain. Then José calls. You don’t believe it. He wanted someone who knew the club. Madrid gave him four or five names. Later he says: ‘You have good friends. I asked Figo, [Predrag] Mijatovic and Seedorf and they placed you way up there.’
“I learn. One thing above all: be honest, direct, never lie to players. I tell them sometimes: ‘You’ll leave here today thinking I’m a son of a bitch but one day you’ll realise.’ After Madrid, I told my dad: ‘I still don’t see it.’ He says: ‘You’ve been with Spain, you’ve spent three years at the best club in the world with the best players in the world, the best manager in the world. How can you not see it?’ The same with José. I said: ‘I’m not sure I’m ready.’ He says: ‘You took 70% of the sessions, worked with the best players, did 90 press conferences and you’re not ready, dickhead?!’ You think: ‘If your dad says it and José Mourinho says it, maybe you have to try.’
“And then one of the best things to happen to me happened: Peter Kenyon and Steve Gibson appeared in my life. At Boro we lost the fourth or fifth game to Brighton. I wanted to die. Leaving the ground, I hear: ‘Hey, Aitor.’ It’s Steve. I think: ‘My first coaching job and here it comes already.’ He says: ‘How are you?’ ‘Pissed off.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because now you have to sack me.’ ‘I have to do what?!’ He takes my arm: ‘Look, the team was down here, now it’s up here, and you’re taking us to the Premier League. He takes me to dinner with his family. We become family. That era was lovely, paradise.”
Leaving hurt. “A lot, a lot, a lot,” Karanka says. “Maybe I could have been like [Alex] Ferguson, but I could see a change might be good for them. That was the best start I could have wished for as a coach but also the worst because there will never be anything like it again.”
Not Nottingham Forest under Evangelos Marinakis? Karanka smiles. “That was different,” he says. “I was signed with an idea but it changed. I stepped aside. Every club is different. Every person. Ownership structures have changed, the demands more immediate. The word ‘project’ is well and good but it’s harder all the time. When everyone works together you think: ‘Why don’t we do this more often?’
“Every moment is different too: I was at Birmingham during the pandemic and although the relationship was good, I couldn’t enjoy it as I would have liked. That was a pity. Sometimes it’s just not the right moment … and sometimes it is. Sometimes you arrive at Real Madrid and win three European Cups in five years, sometimes you turn up and win the clásico and a trophy on the first day.”
