Lisbon Life: From Barcelona Clubland to a New Start

Born in Vigo, although raised since he was little in Bellvitge, he is a lawyer by trade who entered the world of hockey by chance. “The Espanyol hockey section had no place to play their games and they rented the rink of a school in Bellvitge, Joan XXIII. We saw that sport, we fell in love and both my brothers and I started playing.” At 59 years old he directs Benfica, where he currently has a contract until June 2027. “We coaches are accompanied by provisionality and, in a sport like ours, in which there are few projects from which one can make a professional living, that is the reality.” This means that, for the moment, he lives alone in Lisbon, far from his family; but Edu Castro has found the positive: “As I am alone I have more time to dedicate myself to literature and hockey. You have to always make a virtue of necessity.”

After nineteen years at Barça – the last seven managing the first team – in 2024 the club informed him that they wanted to close a cycle and that he would not continue leading the bench. “I was expecting the decision because during the last year we already saw that the following season was being planned without asking our opinion. I would have liked there to be an underlying sporting reason, which was not there, or for them to tell me what we could have done better, to improve myself as a coach, but that was not the case.” that it was a change of cycle, but that they were grateful for everything we had done.

Castro played all the roles of the auca in the hockey section: training coach, junior team coach, second coach and first team coach. “I owe Barça everything I am in the world of hockey. Toni Miró decided that we had the opportunity to lead the team and they were seven wonderful years in which we won 22 titles.” A stage that was not without pressure. “Everyone assumes that you must always win and that, in the world of sport, should not be like that, because there is always a random component. The fact that a team only makes the news when it loses is a very great injustice that should not happen in any sport.” The coach also talks about the responsibility of being a coach: “You know that your job, being more or less correct, depends on whether there are many people who have a good time and are happy about your victories, or who are very sad about the defeats.”

The model of multisport clubs in Portugal

Barça stands out for having several professional sections, a rare model in Spain but not in Portugal. Large clubs, such as Sporting Lisbon, Porto or Benfica, have professional men’s and women’s sections for volleyball, futsal, basketball, handball, hockey, water polo and soccer. “You don’t lack anything, but you have to share everything. This also allows you to be in contact with coaches from other sections in which you talk about common problems that exist in team sports, and that helps you grow.” An initiative that at Benfica is managed by the psychology department, while at Barça it emerged from the personal will of the coaches. “In the last two years at the club I remember having dinners with Sarunas Jasikevicius (basketball), Carlos Ortega (handball), Jesús Velasco (futsal) and Xavi Hernández (soccer),” Castro remembers.

The objective at Benfica is to once again dominate the national and European scene, starting with a Portuguese league in which the average level of the teams is very high. “So far we have not lost a game, but now is when we must start to be good. The past is of no use if in the future you are not good. Every time we want there to be more emotion, and that goes a little against regularity; it is simply being good on a certain day at a certain time. And that can take its toll or can benefit anyone,” reflects the coach.

Portugal has bet heavily on hockey. “The economic commitment has weakened other projects as powerful as Barça’s, in which there is still a lot of investment in hockey, but now there is much more competitiveness and there are more possibilities of other teams winning European Cups.” In fact, Portugal is taking a lot of the players from the Catalan and Spanish territory. “Not only is established talent coming to Portugal, but emerging talent is in other leagues, such as the Italian one. It is difficult to keep players in the Spanish League currently. We must consider what we can do for the future to have more encouraging projects in our house,” concludes an atypical coach who loves hockey and literature.