‘Until I was 16, football passed me by’ - an exclusive interview with Ronald Araujo (2024)

It is two o’clock in the afternoon and The Athletic is in the bowels of the impressive Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper. Even if you have been here many times before, Barcelona’s training ground is impossible to get to know completely. It is easy to feel lost.

Every day, by the entrance to the car park outside, fans wait religiously for training to finish so they can watch the players drive out. Just beyond the barriers around which they congregate is a small metal door.

It does not look like anything special, but this is the entrance to the club’s press room, the point where players, coaches and journalists meet. You go inside, up a dozen stairs and there it is, windowless like a bunker. At the back, there are separate smaller rooms with sofas. This is where we wait for Ronald Araujo.

Barca have won the league title and in recent days have bid farewell to legends Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba. There is a festive atmosphere of serenity in a club that needed to stop licking its wounds and celebrate some silverware.

While our stomachs growl due to hunger, Araujo appears, his prominent physique impressive. He shakes our hands and tells us that he has not had lunch either. “But I’m fine,” he adds.

Araujo has just finished training. Despite the team having days off this week before the last game of the season against Celta Vigo, he has come in for extra work, alone, and is in no hurry to get home.

So the stories were true: he really is a football obsessive.

Here, in an exclusive interview with The Athletic, Araujo talks about everything from his pride at being mentioned as a potential future Barcelona captain to his on-pitch battle with Real Madrid star Vinicius Junior, via his club’s continued struggle to register his contract with La Liga.

This is the 24-year-old defender in his own words…

He watches eight games of football a weekend, only started playing at 16 and is Barcelona's hero in defence.

In this exclusive interview, Ronald Araujo tells @Laia_Cervello & @polballus about his obsession with the game, the importance of family and his duels with Vinicius Jr.

— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) June 1, 2023

This season’s La Liga title was the first won under Xavi since he took charge of his former team in November 2021 and the club’s first since 2019. Araujo says his manager has had a transformational effect on the squad — although the Uruguayan also does plenty of work behind the scenes himself.

“Xavi gave the club its hope back and we’ve learned a lot with him. Xavi is the Barca philosophy that had been lost in previous years: the need to divide, find the ‘third man’ and all these things that have always been done. Now we’re working on that.

“In all the exercises he makes us do, we use the ball. It makes sense because in football we play with the ball (laughs). Everything is very dynamic with him, he tries to implement the Barca style: moving it quickly with one or two touches. There are even a lot of exercises where we play with just one touch; you can’t control the ball, they pass it to you and you have to play a pass immediately.

“I watch a lot of videos. Before matches, if I’m at home with a mate (a traditional caffeine-rich South American herbal drink) or something, I start watching videos of forwards who we’re going to face that weekend. I watch videos of the forwards, the wingers, also sometimes if there’s a No 10 or a player who’s more in the forward zone. I analyse a lot which foot they use, if they cut back a lot, and see how they play.

“I try to analyse each of these things and after games as well. Normally, I wait two or three days and I start watching again: to see what I did well, what I did badly and to continue growing.”

Do you ask the club for those videos?

“They already know what I want (laughs), so they send me them directly on an application we have. And if I want something different, I go to them and ask for it.

“I watch a lot of football. Over a weekend, I can watch eight games. On Saturdays, I come out of training and I start to watch games until night. Sometimes my wife gets annoyed because I spend all day in front of the TV (laughs). And if not, I’m looking at results. I watch a lot, almost all of La Liga. I also really like watching Uruguayan football. I watch everything — and I look for movements I try to copy from some defenders.

“There are various players I watch and I try to take the best from each of them. These days it’s (Liverpool’s Virgil) van Dijk. Manchester City’s defenders as well are playing at a good level this season. I analyse a bit from all of them: the movements they make, how they move the ball, trying to learn.”

Araujo had to learn fast after moving from Uruguay to Barcelona B — the club’s reserve side now known as Barca Atletic — in 2018.

Born and raised in Rivera, a small city in north Uruguay that borders Brazil, Araujo is from a humble family. His mother — who is Brazilian — sold fried pastries at Huracan de Rivera, the club where he started out, while he first caught Barca’s eye while playing for Boston River, a club from the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo.

He still remembers his roots in Uruguay; one picture from his time at Montevideo side Rentistas shows a grinning Araujo being interviewed on a muddy pitch. The Athletic shows this photo to him and asks how it makes him feel.

“Wow! I feel pride. In that game, I also scored three goals despite being a defender! My first hat-trick. It gives me pride to see this photo and to see myself at the Camp Nou now. I’m very grateful to God and to those who support me.

“I arrived at a club with a different philosophy and a different style of play from the one that is usually played in my country. Even more so for me, as I only started playing football at almost 17 years old. Until I was 16, football passed me by.

“Going from a small team in Uruguay directly to Barca was a really big change, but from the start I never let my head drop, I always trained. In fact, a lot of the time, if the team trained in the morning, I returned in the afternoon to work more.

“My family and my parents are everything to me; they instilled the values I have. From the beginning, I knew things are not easy to achieve. It’s beautiful because we come from… I’m not going to say from nothing, but we had very little. At home, we often lacked a bit of food. That’s why I said what I said about the values my parents instilled in me of looking after what you have, of giving your maximum and always wanting the best for your family.

“I see there’s a lot of pressure on small kids. I’ve got a younger brother and when I go (home) on holiday, I go and see him (play). The parents go crazy putting pressure on their kids. They want them to be a player to save their family! My mum used to say a lot: ‘First, study’. I think things went so well for me at school because if I didn’t get good marks, they wouldn’t let me go to training!

“I only saw my father for four days a month. He worked in the fields, in forestry, and he would spend 15 days away from home, then he’d come back for Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday he would go again. (It was) like that almost all my life.

“It’s the sacrifice of wanting to make a success of your family. My mother also worked cleaning houses. It was a sacrifice they made to give us the best and today it makes me very happy to be able to repay what they did for me a bit.

“They’re in Uruguay. I live here with my wife and my daughter. My parents are from the countryside and they don’t want to leave it. When I bring them here, they stay for 15 days and then they want to go!”

Araujo’s parents made sure he was grounded when he was younger. A proposed move to Argentinian giants Boca Juniors fell through as the Uruguayan’s parents wanted him to focus on his studies.

“I went over there but they didn’t let me join. I even went to more teams from the capital (Buenos Aires) and they never let me go. They let me live that experience, but afterwards, they said: ‘Come back; come and study’.

“It’s true there was a moment (when) I was growing when I said: ‘Pa, the train has already left and I won’t have more opportunities’. But my mum always said to me: ‘No, relax, if your objective is to be a footballer, you’ll end up being one’.”

Araujo’s mother was proven right when her son signed for Barca B. He spent two years with them but made his first-team debut under Ernesto Valverde in October 2019 — a game against Sevilla in which he was sent off for a challenge on Javier Hernandez.

But Araujo has since developed into one of the most impressive defenders in Europe and now has 113 Barca appearances under his belt. He is even being talked about as a future captain of the side.

Despite this, Barca have experienced troubled times while Araujo has been at the club.

In April 2022, he and Barca reached an agreement to renew his contract until 2026 with a €1billion ($1.1bn; £860m) buy-out clause, but the club have yet to register the deal and that of his team-mate Gavi with La Liga due to their financial problems. Liverpool and Chelsea were reportedly among the teams interested in Araujo before he committed his future to the club.

“I’m calm. Those are things the people who work with me and the club deal with. I’m calm, and from within the club, they’ve transmitted the same calmness and said everything will be resolved soon. I showed with my renewal that I’m happy and I want to be here. Nothing more. I think these are things that get resolved.

“I rejected very important offers; in various cases, even more than they gave me here. I’m happy here. We live in a world in which money is very important but, for me, it’s not the most important thing. I was doing well here, the people love me, and I feel at home. That’s the most important thing.

“I also have a lot of faith in the team we have, in the young players. I know that, with years and experience, we’re going to keep on growing and I hope we can build a really good group with lots of quality so that important titles arrive. It’s what we need.

“I don’t do what I do to become captain. I do it because it comes naturally to me. If at some point the opportunity arises, it would be a source of pride. I’m going to continue like that always; during my whole career, I want to keep being that leader.

“Now there are young players in the first team, I always try to make them feel good. We’ve got to be a family because you’ll see the positive effects of that in the results. I had good leaders in my short career in Uruguay and I learnt from them.”

One of the defining battles of this season in La Liga has been the duel between Araujo and Vinicius Jr whenever Barca and Real Madrid came up against each other. The Uruguayan says his rivalry with the Brazil forward is based on admiration.

“We respect each other a lot. We didn’t have a relationship before, but now we respect each other and, during games, we talk about everything. We’re professional players and it’s all very healthy. Duels are part of football. It’s true a lot of noise is created when a Clasico arrives but, between us, we’re very calm and we try to give our best.

“For me, Vinicius Jr is the best in one-v-ones today. I try to concentrate and believe in my work and my potential. The most important thing (when playing against him) is to concentrate because he’s a player who runs for the whole 90 minutes. Maybe you win six or seven duels, but in one he’ll break your hips and score a goal against you.

“The thing is, sometimes he goes from zero to 100 and buuff… God willing, there’ll be a lot more duels here in our careers. It’s beautiful.”

The Athletic shows Araujo a compilation of his defending against Vinicius Jr and asks how he does it. “I’m not going to tell you a lot because afterwards, he’ll know what I’m going to do!” he says with a laugh, although he does let us in on one or two ways he tries to stop the Madrid forward…

“There I try to stop him from going inside and show him outside so that he crosses with his left. He’s right-footed and, obviously, it’s better to make him use his weaker foot. It’s true that some players have a lot of quality and will put in a good ball anyway, but you always try.

“Not only with him but with all players, I try to make them take the decision — not me. If they’re very good, they wait for you as a defender to make an attack, then they dribble past you. I think it happened to me in one move at the Camp Nou; I tried to take the ball off him and that was the mistake I made. It’s better to wait for them to take the decision.”

Vinicius Jr has not been met with that respect elsewhere in Spain. Last month, he was targeted with racist insults by Valencia fans, an incident which has led to their ground being partially closed, along with condemnation from fellow professionals, the Brazilian president Lula da Silva and the United Nations, among others.

“What happened with Vinicius Jr was really bad; something that must not happen again. Unfortunately, it still happens. It happened in La Liga and to a well-known player but, in reality, it’s a message for the whole of society.

“You see it now because it happened in front of the cameras, but there are a lot of people who suffer from it every day at school or at work. We need to say ‘enough already’ to these situations of racism. It’s not good, it’s not healthy. It doesn’t make any sense to insult and say unnecessary things to whichever person it may be.”

Araujo’s performances have turned him into a Barca fan favourite this season. That love affair with the Uruguayan looks set to continue for many years to come…

“It’s very beautiful having that connection with the people. From the start I felt that love and even more so now with the first team when the entire Camp Nou sings: ‘Uruguayo, Uruguayo’ (Uruguayan, Uruguayan).

“I feel important because I feel like I’m doing things well. It’s a dream and it pushes me to keep on growing to give more joy to the people who show me that love.

“That’s important in a club like Barcelona — it’s the club of (Lionel) Messi, Ronaldinho. That the whole Camp Nou chants my name is a source of pride and moves me. It’s important to give that back.”

(Top photo: Pedro Salado/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images. Visual design by Sam Richardson)