Gabriel 'Biel' Ribas Ródenas (Palma, 1985) was confident: “I already had my head withdrawn from the world of football. I had assumed the end of my career and was home with other plans. They called me and asked if I was ready. Since it was close to Madrid, which is where I live, I did the numbers, they added up, and I decided to come help. That's how it went".
The Mallorca goalkeeper, from 37 sticks, was entrusted with an impossible mission (case): to save CF Talavera. A dying team with a plant designed to be judged in Second RFEF that at the last moment of summer was promoted to First and that the competition was leveled. In fact, the blue and whites added a point in the first few days and were on their way to being the laughing stock of the category.
However, with Biel Ribas at the finish line, something clicked and the Talaveras have become a very solid team, which has accumulated eight games without losing (four wins and four draws) and has that impossible mission of salvation to only five points with the entire second lap ahead. What was then a utopia is now a reality. The goalkeeper points to the relief on the bench as key: the board is busy doing without Rubén Gala and giving the helm to Pedro Díaz, the subsidiary coach. The bet could not have gone better.
“Since Pedro has come, I don't know what he has done, but the team has changed completely. Physically we couldn't stand the games and now we are at a good level for 90 minutes. There has been a radical change. The day to day is different from when I arrived. We have earned the respect of the team restaurant and nobody did it before, but it was normal”, says Biel Ribas, who has kept a clean sheet for more than 600 minutes, a record in the short life of Primera RFEF .
The unbeaten team lost in the first play of the game against Badajoz last Sunday, with a long shot from Buyla that surprised him. “I didn't expect the ball to come out so quickly, it goes through my stick and I eat it. There is little to analyze. I eat it and the point. I am very demanding with myself and very critical when I have to be to improve ”, he admits with a humility that we are common in a footballer.
The career of Biel Ribas, who has played more than 400 games between Segunda and Segunda B, has a journey through a mountain of teams from which the Espanyol subsidiary will come out: Lorca Deportiva, UD Salamanca, Atlético Balerares, Numancia, UCAM Murcia, Real Murcia, Fuenlabrada and, again, UCAM Murcia. “At Numancia, in the Second Division, I was very comfortable. In Salamanca too, but there were money problems, they didn't pay and the club ended up disappearing, ”he recalls about his long career.
surrounded by stars
The current CF Talavera goalkeeper was a promise of Spanish football, winning the 19 U2004 European Championship as a starter and losing against Leo Messi's Argentina in the quarterfinals of the U20 World Cup the following year. “I can say that he played with great players (in those lower teams they shared a dressing room with future world champions such as Sergio Ramos, David Silva, Cesc Fábregas, Fernando Llorente or Raúl Albiol)”, he presumes. With Messi, in addition, he faced off in the youth derbies between Barça and Espanyol, and "it was already seen that he stood out, that he had things that others did not."
Perhaps his peak came too soon, at just 18 years old, on the first day of the 2004-2005 season. Kameni was injured, Erwin Lemmens (the second goalkeeper) was not available either and Biel Ribas had to play the last 20 minutes of that match at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium against Deportivo de la Coruña that ended in a XNUMX-XNUMX draw. Walter Pandiani scored the goal in what would be his debut and, ultimately, the only shock in the First Division.
“I trained with the first team and played with the subsidiary. Kameni was there, then Gorka Iraizoz came and there was no room. When you're young you do things that you don't as a veteran. In the end you have many distractions. I have always had a bit of a head with many birds and I would have liked to have it more furnished because I think he could have been a good goalkeeper at Espanyol", he admits with the perspective that time gives.
