“They push me against the wall, hands on my head. They frisk me, recriminating me in a language I don’t understand. Something’s happening, but I don’t know what. Before I know it, it’s happening. I respond to their threats by shouting: ‘Please, help, please!’” So begins Togo, a book in which fear is a recurring theme. Written by Óscar de Marcos, it tells the story of the journeys that shaped him, the chapters alternating between his arrival in Africa and at Athletic Club Bilbao.
In the book De Marcos says his parents wanted him to be happy, seeing football as a means of education. But players, he writes, become vain and fall fast, pressure bringing a realisation that you are alone. He explains how Togo “tore away that bubble, that nonsense, that fame, in one go”. The opening scene is just a moment but also a metaphor. “When I read the [first draft of the] book back, I thought ‘it’s too much’,” he admits. “I wasn’t planning to open up like that.”
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