by “I am semi-professional and I am lucky to be able to say that football is my job. I am made of clay, so to speak”. So resume Joan Luque (Barcelona, 1992) his extensive and successful career traveling throughout the British geography. There where goals are shouted the same in the Premier, England’s highest division, or in the National League, which marks the fifth and lower categories. The so-called ‘Non-League’ of semi-professional football on the islands. The same one who saw Luque became a hero, idol, figure… and even god. The ‘Spanish God’, properly.
“Success is not reaching First Division. Rubén Alcaraz, First Division player and friend of mine, told me ‘I wouldn’t have had the balls to do what you have done. Mine is easier.’ It’s difficult to reach the elite. I envy them more than anyone and I am very happy for them. But that’s what he told me: ‘What you do, I don’t do.’ And more for the money, which is not what I can do to say that I am going to Barcelona to buy three houses. It’s more because of the pleasure it gives me to make a living from football and get to know these places,” says Luque with a smile. And seeing the story is not the same as starring in it firsthand.
FROM MUD TO GLORY
It was in 2022 when Joan reached the top, five years after landing in the United Kingdom and almost twenty years after her time at La Masia. Maidstone rose as champions to the fifth division, largely due to their record numbers. 22 goals and seven assists, being the best player in the category. The fans, who came to call him ‘Spanish God’, will never forget him. “One brought the son here to Worthing from Maidstone to do an hour of training for the boy, for his birthday. And he said to me ‘how much do we pay you?’. How are you going to pay me? And I told him so. With all the coaches there, having to travel an hour or so for the child to take the class with me… that is my gift.”
It was intense, but short. More than Luque himself would have wanted. A serious knee injury sidelined him for much of the following campaign, 2022/23. There came the bitter pill of non-renewal. “One of the most difficult situations to digest in my career, the most difficult to assimilate.” Then came Worthing, his eighth club in England. Back to the sixth division. And in between, a loan to AFC Totton, seventh. There he is, once again, the great protagonist, with three goals in three games.. “I hadn’t enjoyed these six months here (in Worthing) that much, which is why he went out on loan. Now I’m happy. I feel important. It’s a step forward“, he points out, looking for that enthusiasm that made him make the leap from Spain in 2017.
On national soil he had passes through Gramanet, Montañesa, Vilassar de Mar, Santboià, Sant Rafel and Llosetense. At an early age he also wore the colors of Barça, from the ages of eleven to thirteen. “I spent two years playing and one more on loan at Damm. He was little. There I learned to play with both legs, I have taken that with me forever. Many things that we do not give importance to, how to control with the far leg, which they probably taught me there more than on other teams and then you mechanize it”, he remembers about his years as a Barça player.
ARRIVE AND KISS THE SAINT
These technical conditions made him stand out above the others in his first English club, the Heybridge Swiftswhere he scored 30 goals and had 22 assists… without making a living from football: “He earned 35 pounds a week, which is 140 a month, about 160 euros. You don’t even pay for food for the month. I had to look for a job. I didn’t like the job where I was because they didn’t let me talk and after a month I told them I was leaving,” she remembers. The next year, at Lincoln City, he already doubled his income from Spain in just two seasons. “Seven years playing there and I earned half of what I earned in my second year here, which went from £35 a game to that.”
Joan Luque during his time at Lincoln City / ‘X’: @LincolnCity_FC
Luque recognizes, however, that Spain is improving. “In England I have experienced emotional moments of feeling like a truly first-class player. I have felt that English passion for football that is now being seen a little in Spain, like in the Sant Andreu-Europa the other day. That happens here in all the teams,” he analyzes. And, although it is not the priority, he does not rule out a return to his homeland, from where they have already searched for him: “Representatives have written to me, but I tell them my conditions and if they don’t come close enough, there is no point in moving. Now I’m starting to contemplate it a little more. I didn’t even listen to them before.”
