"I handled the first year very well, but the second was chaos. It is a club with very high demands, and I believe that anyone who plays for Zaragoza can play for any team because you already carry that pressure with you. It is clearly a burden because some youngsters are earning very little money for the pressure they are having to withstand. The thing is, people have to understand where they are and need to change their mindset," Carcelén said.
Carcelén was there for the dreadful 6-2 defeat to Llagostera and says that "very strange things happened, and I do not really know what happened against a team that had been relegated." "Those of us who stayed the following year were treated like targets, and we were no longer considered good enough to be in the team. Maybe it is a coincidence that nobody is good enough for Real Zaragoza, but then those same players sign for top-flight or elite teams, and I think the club needs to take a hard look at itself," he added.
HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE COACHES
The right-back worked under several coaches at Real Zaragoza despite spending only two years there. The first was Ranko Popovic, with whom he got off to a bad start but eventually developed a good relationship: "I had a very hard time in preseason because he gave me a lot of stick. I was not included in the squad for the first few matches, and he called me a drunk over a joke I played on him one day. The relationship changed after Marc Bertrán was injured and I won the starting spot. In the end, we finished on very good terms after such a difficult beginning."
However, his most strained relationship was with Raúl Agné, with whom he never saw eye to eye: "I think he had it in for me because I was from Cádiz, as things had not gone well for him in Cádiz. I spoke to him about the fact that he was not counting on me. I started playing again because he had no other choice, but he dropped me again after just a few matches."
The low point in their relationship came just before Agné was dismissed, following a 1-2 defeat to Sevilla Atlético after Zaragoza had played with an extra man and conceded in the 95th minute. "He told me he was going to slap me the next day at the team meeting. I started crying after Zapater separated us, and when we went out to train they made us run ten kilometers around the pitch. The next day they sacked him because I told Lalo Arantegui," Carcelén concluded.
