Cinderella of the Club World Cup: "kings of the world" for 80 euros a week

Barcelona"These days we want chartered flights. It's outrageous. You arrive at the airport and you don't go through where normal people go. The bus drops you off at the plane door, and the plane is amazing. You can order whatever you want. When you arrive and get off the plane, you have the bus waiting for you at the car, and then you get in the car, and then you get in the car, and then the police. From behind. You see how they block the highway and the cars line up for us to pass. You feel like the king of the world. Garriga is a Cinderella midfielder in the new Club World Cup: New Zealand's Auckland City, an amateur club that claims to represent 99% of world football. On the first matchday they lost 10-0 to Bayern Munich. On Friday, they lost 6-0 to Benfica. This Tuesday they close the group stage against Boca Juniors.

Garriga had played in the Catalan First and Second Division with Alpicat against Balaguer, Martinenc, and Rubi. Until 2017, he decided to leave home to learn English and disconnect from football: "I needed to stop, because I wasn't enjoying it." The idea was to go to London, but a friend wrote to him from New Zealand, and he was seduced by the beaches and mountains, and above all, the idea of going so far away: "You can't go any further." He left for three or six months, and it will soon be eight years since he took his first flight.

He radiates joy, but the first few months were tough. He cried a lot. He talks about loneliness: "I took it as a life experience, but many days I thought: 'Why am I getting up at five in the morning to go clean a bathroom that's in shambles? Did I study for four years and a master's degree to be here alone doing this?'" The distance hurts him: his grandfather died in 2022 and he couldn't say goodbye. On Thursday, he reunited with his parents and sister, because they went to watch the games against Benfica and Boca Juniors: they hadn't seen each other since September.

Garriga has played for Auckland since 2022. It's the hegemonic team in Oceania football since Australian clubs emigrated to Asia: it has won the last four Champions Leagues in the territory, with an MVP for the Catalan. It's the club in the world that has played in the World Cup the most times, but the players aren't professionals: they train three or four afternoons a week, and the New Zealand federation sets a maximum salary of around eighty euros a week to protect the league from speculation. The players have other jobs. In fact, several have had to take time off to play in the World Cup. Some couldn't play in the Champions League because they didn't have enough leave. Garriga works at the club, on a thirty-hour contract: he coaches the youth team and organizes events with young people. In New Zealand, the king of sports isn't football, but rugby.

"Being in the World Cup isn't even something I could dream of. Being here is super beautiful. It's not normal, and you have to enjoy it. It happens once in a lifetime, and we're very lucky to experience it," he says. He admits that he had never lost 10-0, the most resounding rout in the history of the competition, and that during parts of the match, the dream turned into a "nightmare." "You enjoy the aftermath more and the memory of being there, because you suffer on the pitch," he acknowledges. But he emphasizes that Auckland didn't make a fool of itself against Bayern. "Nobody likes losing by so many goals, but it shows a bit of reality. These clubs are outrageous; they multiply our value by a hundred and our salaries by a thousand," he explains.

Teams two hundred times more valuable

In reality, Bayern Munich values Auckland by two hundred times its value on Transfermarkt: 900 million to 4.5 million. Benfica and Boca Juniors, by eighty and eighteen million. He says Auckland could play in the First or Second Division, and that narrowly losing one of the three matches would be a success. He's one of the team's most valuable players: 200,000 euros. "Transfermarkt should collect the money they say each player is worth," he says, laughing. He has gained hundreds of followers on Instagram because of the World Cup, but has yet to reach 2,500.

Garriga didn't get a Bayern jersey because he had to go in for a drug test, but there he was able to spend many minutes with Serge Gnabry and Harry Kane. He treasures two photos for life. While they waited, they talked about their stories. They listened to him with astonished expressions. "They don't treat you like a fan. They treat you like a colleague," he says. He also has an eternal memory of the match against Benfica: the shirt of Nicolás Otamendi, World Cup champion with Leo Messi.

The World Cup and Auckland's dream are over. "After the match against Boca, we'll return to anonymity and everyone will forget about us. No one will remember us anymore. It's our reality. It's fine for me now, because I like to be calm."