Sergi Darder on the perils of growing up an Espanyol fan in Barcelona and LaLiga derby

Being an Espanyol fan in Barcelona is never easy and on derby day it can be twice as tough. Midfielder Sergi Darder knows all about life as the overwhelming underdog.

‘The fans know it even more than the players,’ he says ahead of Sunday’s visit of Barcelona’s to Espanyol’s stadium.

‘If in your class at school there are 18 kids supporting Barça and one who supports Espanyol then, I’m not going to say they get bullied, but it’s not easy.’

Espanyol’s Sergi Darder (right) is a boyhood fan of the club and feels their losses keenly 

Darder joined Espanyol as a 13-year-old and played for Malaga and Lyon before returning there

Darder joined Espanyol as a 13-year-old. He’s been relegated and promoted with them. 

He’s also known the highs of a big move to Lyon, and he talks eloquently about the lows of needing to seek the help of a psychologist when the pressures of football get too much.

Before discussing that weighty and increasingly less-taboo topic he elaborates on the young Espanyol fan growing up in a city so dominated by the ‘other club’.

‘The kid ends up thinking: “why is it just me?” You see the front of the sports papers and you ask yourself: “why is it always about Barça?” Everything pushes you to supporting them. That’s the easy thing to do,’ he says.

‘You support Espanyol and you can be seen as the odd one out. It’s difficult. But then there are lots who say: ‘I don’t care what others think!’ I’m an Espanyol fan because I love Espanyol.

‘That’s why I think Espanyol fans are a lot more loyal than many other supporters of other clubs because it’s more difficult. If you’re an Espanyol fan then you’re passionate about it, there is no other way.’

Memphis Depay goes down after being tackled to win the crucial penalty in the reverse fixture between Barcelona and Espanyol back in November

Depay converted the spot-kick to earn Barcelona three points against their local rivals 

Espanyol do have 30,000 member-fans and the club have won four Spanish Cups and reached two European finals in its history. 

There is the potential to turn the Barcelona rivalry into something a little closer to that which exists between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid.

‘It’s a huge club,’ Darder says. ‘But sometimes it seems less so because so much goes to them [Barcelona].’ Atletico have a budget that is a lot closer to Real Madrid’s than ours to Barcelona.

‘Barça in their worse moment [financially] have still gone out and paid 50m euros for a player [Ferran Torres]. Can we compete with them? I hope so. No one wants it more than me, but it’s difficult.’

Darder moved from Espanyol’s youth system to Malaga aged 18 and got his big break playing against Aston Villa in a pre-season friendly. 

‘They wanted to sign a midfielder but I played well and the coach [Bernd] Schuster told the club ‘with this kid we don’t need to’.

Espanyol celebrate their goal against Athletic Bilbao on Monday in a 2-1 defeat 

He moved to Lyon when Malaga began to asset strip and it was there he played alongside Samuel Umiti, Memphis Depay, Nabil Fekir and Alexandre Lacazette.

 He is not ashamed to say he was fazed by the competition at first. ‘It was crazy. Excuse the language but I was crapping myself,’ he jokes.

‘It wasn’t easy with a dressing room that was already established but I learned more in my two years then than during 10 in Spain.’

Of the players he coincided with he picks out winger Fekir. ‘He injured his cruciate ligaments the day I arrived,’ Darder recalls. ‘I think he had an offer from Liverpool at the time. It takes a while to come back from that but he was the player that always made a difference.’

Another former team-mate Umtiti now finds himself on the other side of Sunday’s derby. The French defender aside, Darder admits it’s hard having friends at Barcelona. 

Results of late have been tough for Darder and Espanyol but they remain in mid-table

Would it really be such an unforgivable act to maintain a friendship at the rival club?

‘You have to be careful because if you lose a game and then you’re out with a Barcelona player. I don’t think it’s a big deal but it can appear that way,’ he says.

Darder is sensitive to the pressures that can weigh too heavily on a player’s shoulders if he doesn’t learn to cope with the mental demands. It’s why he sought help when the strains began to take the joy away from his football.

Espanyol were relegated in the 2019-20 season and he took things to heart more than most.

‘My head was in a bad place,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to see my friends, my family, nothing. You can go out but there is always the chance a fan will see you and shout something. It’s not nice. A lot of the time I would just stay home.

‘At the time I was putting football before everything else. I was happy if things were good on the pitch and sad if they weren’t and that’s not sustainable.

‘That year when we went down, because of my form not because of the relegation, I realized that I was not in a good place.

‘I’m not going to call it depression because there are people who really suffer but I needed help.

‘I realised that it couldn’t be right that I was unhappy and my friends who were having to work hard eight hours of every day and still not have enough money were happier than me. I would finish a bad training session and not want to talk to anyone.

The Espanyol head coach Vicente Moreno on the sidelines during their match against Bilbao

‘I was 26-27 years of age with 10 years of football ahead of me and I wanted to enjoy those years instead of suffering. Now I’m enjoying my football again.

‘First I went to a psychologist to organise my life away from football a bit and get the joy of family life back. I started to think: okay today we lost but I am still going to go out for dinner with friends. I got that back.

‘And then I started working with a coach to work on the more football related side of things. You lose a ball and it’s not the end of the world. Learning techniques to stay focused and to stop putting too much emphasis on things that don’t matter.’

Darder ponders something Spain coach Luis Enrique said to keeper Unai Simon after his howler at the Euros: ‘In sport you have to have the memory of a fish’. 

‘My coaches would tell me,’ Darder says. ‘If my first pass in a game was bad I would have a bad match. They could take me off if I misplaced the first pass because it affected me so much.’

And it’s not that now he has a ‘don’t care’ attitude. He’s playing the best football of his life and explains: ‘You have to say to yourself when training starts that football is the most important thing in the world, but when the session is over you need to know how to switch off, until the next day.’

Espanyol’s Aleix Vidal celebrates after scoring in the win over Real Madrid back in October

Espanyol came straight back up as champions after relegation and earlier in the season were desperately unlucky not to beat Barcelona.

His old Lyon team-mate Memphis scored the only goal from a dubious penalty and with Raul de Tomas hitting the post twice and Landry Dimata missing a header they had the chances to claim a rare Camp Nou win.

Sunday’s game gives them another opportunity. ‘We deserved at least a draw,’ says Darder of the game earlier this season.

‘But Barça in their worst moment, they beat you. We were unlucky that they had a new coach [Xavi] just as they had to play us. That changes the level of motivation.’

Barcelona have won 125 of the 213 La Liga derbies to date, Espanyol just 44. 

The club’s Chinese president Chen Yansheng said this week: ‘We beat Real Madrid this season so why not Barcelona?’

Darder hopes the team’s good home form can lead them to victory. It would certainly make that solitary Espanyol football fan happy sat in class on Monday.