Albert Riera: The Spanish backpacker and part-time player now coach of Auckland City ready to take on Al Ain

When Riera decided to travel to New Zealand 14 years ago, pitting his wits against the likes of Hernan Crespo was the farthest thing from his mind

Auckland City coach Albert Riera says he is now settled in New Zealand. Reuters

Albert Riera, 40, will manage Auckland City for Sunday’s Intercontinental Cup game against Asian champions Al Ain at the Hazza bin Zayed Stadium.

His players are part-timers, yet serial winners. Ahead of the game, The National spoke to the Spaniard to hear one of the most improbable stories in football.

How does a Catalan end up managing Auckland City?

I must take you back 14 years, that’s when I first moved to Auckland. I went to New Zealand for one year for two reasons: to travel and to learn English.

I was a paramedic in Mollerussia near the city of Lleida, (two hours inland from Barcelona close to the Pyrenees Mountains). I had worked for the ambulance service for six years, I was settled and loved my job. I also played football semi-professionally.

I trained almost every day and travelled a lot around Catalonia. I’d played since I was seven. I loved it but felt I needed a break. I was waking up at 7am, working a shift with the ambulance and then going training. I’d get home at 11.30pm.

I played around Spain’s fourth level, but I also loved travelling and would use my holidays to go everywhere I could in the world. I had this idea of taking a year off – and my employers agreed. I convinced two friends to come with me and we were going to go to Australia, but there were no working visas to go for one year. However New Zealand was offering a one-year working holiday visa for Spanish people. There were 200 vacancies, I think we were number 1, 2 and 3.

What happened to playing football?

I didn’t want to play football, I was sick of it, I wanted a break from it, to explore, to get lost in New Zealand and make road trips. But my dad said, ‘What are you going to do for a whole year?’ Dad researched and found that a Catalan guy Ramon Tribulietx was coaching Auckland City. Dad said: ‘Why not send him an email and play football there? It’s a good way to meet people and you’ll keep fit.’

I told Dad that I didn’t want to get into the cycle of training and playing all the time on a year out and that the level was probably too high for me. But my dad was stubborn and insisted. So, because of my dad, I emailed Ramon and thought ‘he’s not going to reply’. But it would keep dad off my back.

What happened next?

Two days later, Ramon got back to me and said they were looking for a midfielder. He asked me to send video footage. I didn’t have any, but remembered my former club Benavent had recorded some games. I got the video to Ramon and he called me back and said: ‘I think you can help us.’ He asked me to trial for a week so I did that when I landed in Auckland.

I thought that would be it but after one week he said that he wanted to sign me for the rest of the season – two months.

My friends said, ‘We’ve come to travel, not to play football’. I said, ‘Look, in two months I’ll finish and then we’ll hire a van and travel’. In the meantime, we won the Oceanic Champions League and I travelled to New Caledonia, to Tahiti for free. Football was letting me travel.

At the end of the season, we still hired the van and goofed around New Zealand where you work for people in return for accommodation. We were in a hippy community in the bush and we were gardening, cleaning, chopping wood, making buildings. We were also packing kiwi fruits – you soon get sick of them. We’d work night shifts for 10 hours per night just to save more money to travel again. The idea was six months in New Zealand and six months travelling back to Spain via Asia – Tibet and places like that.

Did that ever happen?

No. Ramon called me one day and said he was pulling the squad together for the following season and he was thinking of me. I told him that wouldn’t be possible as I had to go back to Spain – I had to be back by January 7 as work only allowed me a year off. Yet he wouldn’t give up and I told him I wanted a week to decide. I couldn’t sleep for days. The money he was offering was not enough to live on, but I’ve always been prepared to take a risk. People told me that I was crazy giving up a proper job to play semi-professional football, yet it wasn’t ordinary. We’d be playing in the Club World Cup in Japan, for instance.

I could keep travelling, play more Champions League (far from not being good enough, Riera won the Golden Ball for the best player in the tournament) and ended up playing three years at Auckland City from the age of 28. (Auckland played in the Fifa Club World Cups in several countries. In 2014 they stunned football after defeating Morocco's Moghreb Tetouan, African champions ES Setif and Concacaf champions Cruz Azul. The part-timers were only eliminated by South American champions San Lorenzo 2-1 after extra time).

My intention was to go back to Spain, but in one pre-season we played against Wellington Phoenix, one of the two professional teams in New Zealand [Phoenix play in Australia’s A-League].

Their coach, a Scot called Ernie Merrick, asked me to come on trial for one week. Again, I thought it would go nowhere, I’d never played professional football. But on the first day after only one session Ernie said they wanted to offer me a one-year deal. To be honest, I felt fine at the level that day. The problem was that teams were only allowed 4-5 foreign players then and fans were wondering why he was using one of the places for a non-professional footballer. He’d also told me that I was going to be used as a back-up player to support the local guys. Fine. I signed the contract and it was much better money, not what I’d earned as a backpacker. I never expected to become a professional footballer aged 29 and the foreign players were usually big names, not backpackers. People thought Ernie was crazy.

YOKOHAMA, JAPAN - DECEMBER 08: Albert Riera of Auckland City competes for the ball against Fabricio of Kashima Antlers during the Fifa Club World Cup quarter-final at International Stadium Yokohama on December 8, 2016 in Yokohama, Japan. Getty Images

But you did have a name. Albert Riera was playing for clubs like Liverpool and Manchester City at the same time.

At first people thought I was the Albert Riera who played for Liverpool and when they realised that I wasn’t the criticism started. And when the club were getting big crowds – and we played in front of up to 30,000 in Australia – that’s a lot of opinions.

Did the criticism stop when, rather than be a backup player, you became a starter who did so well that you were named player of the season?

I moved to Wellington, the capital, a European-style town where you can walk everywhere. It was very windy and everyone warned me about that and the weather was one reason why I left, but that was after three years.

I really enjoyed my football at Wellington. Everyone loved my story, the fans had T-shirts with ‘Viva la Rieralucion’ on them. After one year I was offered a three-year contract.

I was called up to play for the league’s All-Stars against Juventus and played 90 minutes against Juventus. It was a highlight of my life, playing against [Andrea] Pirlo. We swapped shirts. What a memory.

I became a citizen of New Zealand because the national team coach wanted me to play for the All Whites. I love New Zealand and applied to become a citizen, but then the coach got sacked so I never played for the All Whites.

Then you terminated your own contract at Wellington?

Yes. I was tired of all the travel. Perth away was a seven-hour flight. Away games were international flights. My lifestyle had become travel, meetings and hotels. The travel was taxing. I had enough. I wasn’t just going to play for money, I’ve never done that, so I told the coach and he understood.

And then?

Back to Auckland and part-time football with Ramon. For five years, with less travel. I just wanted to enjoy football and Auckland City was a community-based football club. The crowds are between 100-1,000. I’d been used to that all my life playing in Spain, where, for better and worse, you know all the fans. I appreciated my football more when I was in my mid 30s when I knew my days were coming to an end. I’d made amends with football, from wanting to retire at 25 to still playing at 37. I’d gone from pushing football away from my life to concluding that football is part of my life.

You stopped playing in 2021 and became coach of Auckland City.

For some reason, chances presented themselves. I wasn’t chasing anything, but I did want to try coaching and, I’m not going to lie, it comes natural to me being in front of a group.

Some of the skills I learned as a paramedic are transferable. Pressure is not playing in front of 30,000 or performing in a football trial, it’s not life or death. It’s not that important, so just enjoy it. As a paramedic I faced life or death situations every day. So I learned to make the most of life because tomorrow it can be gone.

As a coach, you’ve won the Champions League in each of the last two seasons …

And with players who are not full-time. We face so many challenges. My players have jobs, some are students, some work in a warehouse. We must play games at 12 o’clock and some of the weather conditions are not fair on my players.

We travel to all these tropical Pacific Islands: Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Samoa. We won the Champions League in Tahiti – it was extremely hard, with players almost fainting because of the weather.

I’ve seen the smallest airports; I’ve discovered all these islands and then I go back to them with my partner. She’s from Valencia, we met in Wellington when I played there. She was travelling like I had.

New Zealand’s two professional football teams Auckland FC and Wellington both play in the predominantly Australian A-League. That means they can’t play in the OFC confederation – but Auckland City can. And they keep winning. They’ve won all 12 Champions League finals they’ve been involved in since 2006.

We’re consistent, in training and playing. When we win the Champions League we play the champions of Asia. It’s always away for us. Last year it was Al Ittihad with [Marcelo] Gallardo as the coach. They had [N'Golo] Kante, [Karim] Benzema, Fabinho. We lost 3-0.

We lost 3-0 when I was a player too. The format was different then. You could play the host team, in Japan. It’s way harder now, but we’re only three games away from playing Real Madrid to become world champions. You never know in football!

Al Ittihad's Karim Benzema celebrates with Muhannad Al Shanqeeti after scoring their third goal against Auckland City in the Club World Cup first round at King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on December 12, 2023. Reuters

Al Ittihad's Karim Benzema celebrates after scoring their third goal with Muhannad Al Shanqeeti. Reuters

Al Ittihad's Karim Benzema celebrates after scoring their third goal. Reuters

Al Ittihad's Karim Benzema celebrates scoring the third goal. Reuters

Al Ittihad's N'Golo Kante celebrates with teammates after scoring their second goal. Reuters

Auckland City's Dylan Manickum looks dejected after Al Ittihad's N'Golo Kante scores their second goal. Reuters

Al Ittihad's Romarinho celebrates after scoring the opener. AP

Al Ittihad's Romarinho, left, celebrates after scoring the opening goal. AP

Al Ittihad's Romarinho celebrates after scoring the opening goal. AP

Al Ittihad's Karim Benzema after being fouled. AP

Auckland City's Regont Murati in action with Al Ittihad's Zakaria Al Hawsawi. Reuters

Auckland City's Nathan Lobo in action. Reuters

An Al Ittihad fan before the match. Reuters

Al Ittihad fans in the stands. Reuters

You’ll play against Al Ain on Sunday, the champions of Asia, in Abu Dhabi. They’re managed by legendary striker Hernan Crespo.

We’re realistic, but I’ll tell my players to compete as well as we can. I remember Crespo as a player, one of the great Argentina strikers. He was a busy number 9 running behind all the time, full of energy. I’m happy for my team to be playing his.

What’s your future?

I don’t see myself going back to Europe. We visit family and friends once a year. I like it here, I like Australia, with a combination of good lifestyle, professionalism without the crazy pressure of needing to win that you can get in Europe. Maybe I won’t be a head coach, but an assistant. But I’m not thinking much beyond the game on Sunday.