Barcelona’s Ronald Araújo: ‘I came from a different football. But I told myself, I have to play here’

S ome days he would go before training, others after training and there were days he went before and after training, but every day without fail Ronald Araújo would head to the bullring. He was 19, recently arrived in Spain, and what he wanted most was to fit in. The bullring is a small cage with portable metal panels on wheels, relentlessly receiving and returning endless passes, and it became his place. Because if everything was different, ask the Uruguayan to name the hardest thing about moving to Barcelona as a teenager 6,000 miles from home and his response is simple: “the ball”.

“Football happened fast,” Araújo says. “At 17, I was still in my little home town, playing for the local team, Huracán Rivera. At 17, I went to Montevideo on trial at Rentistas. I was in the under-19s for five months, got promoted to the seniors in the second division, then they transferred me to Boston River. From Rivera to Barcelona in two years; it was mad.

“My dad worked in forestation. He would be away two weeks, come back a couple of days and go again. My mum was a cleaner. Rivera for me is tranquility, peace. Being out in the countryside with my dad, the animals. Whenever I can, I go because it relaxes me. Barcelona was a leap, adapting to the city. The first eight months, I lived near the training ground, then I went up the mountainside to Pallejà, with pine forests. Leave the house and you’re in the mountains, an escape. But when I got in the first team travelling every three days, I came back down the hill.”

Initially signed for Barcelona’s B team – if adapting to the city “cost”, to use Araújo’s word – getting used to the game was a step again. Rivera is not just on the Brazilian border; it straddles it, a two-nation town.