Carrusel Canalla a las 00.30h | El día después de la derrota del Real Madrid y entrevistas a Juanjo Brau y Rafa Jódar

·37 min·2 clips

Barça physio Juanjo Brau describes how Messi's teammates would come to the treatment table mid-session just to ask 'Will he be ready for Sunday?' — and hearing 'yes' immediately calmed the whole squad.

1. El Larguero's Carrusel Canalla covers sports news from a Sunday in early April 2026, featuring football injury analysis, tennis, and cycling. 2. Juanjo Brau, former Barça physiotherapist with 25 years at the club including 18 with the first team, appears to promote his book 'Lo que el fútbol no ve' (What Football Does Not See). 3. The episode's central thesis from Brau is that physical recovery of elite players is inseparable from psychological management — the physio must function partly as a psychologist. 4. Brau explains that the 'toxic entourage' problem — agents, families, and advisors giving conflicting recovery advice — is worse now than in earlier decades because players travel with larger personal support staffs. 5. He describes treating Carles Puyol through repeated knee cleanups each June, noting Puyol and Brau would be the only people at the Barça training ground all month, surviving on coffee and long working sessions. 6. On Messi, Brau reveals that in Barça youth football, when things were going badly, coaches would explicitly tell players 'if it doesn't work, give it to Leo' — and this habit persisted into senior football. 7. He describes the treatment room phenomenon: when Messi was lying on the table being treated, teammates would pass by to ask if he would be fit for Sunday, and a simple confirmation immediately settled the team's anxiety. 8. Brau contrasts Puyol and Frenkie de Jong as opposite personality types — Puyol was nearly impossible to stop and Pep Guardiola personally needed him for Real Madrid matches, while De Jong needed active motivation. 9. He makes the general point that 'the stimuli that competition produces cannot be replicated by any training session,' explaining why return-to-play timelines are always uncertain even when a player is training normally. 10. On Nico Williams's pubalgia, Brau declines to give a verdict without knowing the full context, but notes that pubalgia is a broad diagnostic term covering many different underlying causes. 11. He says calendar density is the primary driver of injury rates, describing a cycle where teams cannot adequately train players because they must immediately recover them for the next match. 12. Tennis segment: 19-year-old Rafa Jodar, from Leganés, wins the ATP 250 tournament in Marrakech — his first ATP title in his first professional year, beating Marco Truncchelletti and losing only five or six points in the entire final. 13. Jodar tells interviewer Álvaro Benito he was ranked 1700 in the world two years ago, became US Open Junior champion in 2024, played college tennis at the University of Virginia in 2025, and only turned full professional in 2025. 14. He says he considers himself a calm person by nature, his on-court temperament reflects his off-court personality, and he had a clear plan from the first point of the final. 15. Jodar names Rafa Nadal as his childhood idol and Carlos Alcaraz as his current reference, and says staying healthy is his primary goal before tournament wins. 16. Tomorrow he will be ranked world number 57, making him the youngest player in the 2006 generation to break the top 100, ahead of Joan Fonseca from the previous year. 17. Cycling segment: Tadej Pogacar wins the Tour de Flanders for the third time, completing three wins from three race appearances in 2026 — Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, and Flanders. 18. UAE team director José Fernando Machín says Pogacar will target Paris-Roubaix next Sunday, the only monument he has never won, and while it is not the ideal terrain for him, his current form makes him the clear favorite. 19. The panel notes Pogacar at 27 could win his fifth Tour de France this summer, the same age at which Miguel Indurain won his first — inviting comparison with the greatest cyclists in history. 20. The episode ends with a discussion of when Pogacar might race the Vuelta a España, with Machín confirming mutual respect with race director Javier Guillén and saying any commitment will be decided after the Tour de France.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from El Larguero