‘YOU MUST NEVER LOSE BELIEF IN YOURSELF’
JOTA is out of what he calls “the darkness” and can begin his Birmingham City career. He lost the manager who bought him for a club record fee, was viewed with uncertainty by another and now has someone who believes in him.
All the false starts have happened in seven months, leaving Birmingham in relegation trouble and Jota, pronounced “Hota”, less than lukewarm.
When he was handing out certificates of achievement last week at Wyndcliffe Primary School, only a long free-kick from Birmingham’s St Andrew’s ground, he heard head teacher Mrs Ali tell her kids they can achieve their ambitions.
It must have resonated with Jota.
There is a determination about him and with skill and spectacular goals, he is set to become a crowd favourite under Garry Monk, Birmingham’s latest manager in a terribly wasteful season.
Harry Redknapp bought Jota and was binned. Steve Cotterill took over and seemed reluctant to give Jota his full trust before he was also sacked.
Now Jota, 26, can at last flourish.
Present
When Monk was at Middlesbrough he tried to buy Jota from Brentford for £4.5m. Birmingham outbid him. The Blues are shy about revealing what they paid, saying only it’s over the club record £6m paid for Nicola Zigic.
If they are paying by the foot (Zigic is 6ft 6ins, Jota 5ft 9ins) then it’s considerably more, but Monk has got himself an unexpected present.
For his debut Birmingham game, Monk put Jota straight back in the team after he’d sat on the bench 15 times in Cotterill’s 27 games.
Prior to yesterday’s game with Ipswich, it was Monk played three, Jota played three. He scored twice in the 3-0 win over Hull before the international break that has encouraged hope of safety.
Jota also scored twice in Birmingham’s last win prior to that, a 3-1 victory at Sheffield Wednesday. Then he was left out for six games until Monk replaced Cotterill.
Mrs Ali told her pupils that they can be successful no matter what. It’s one of the lessons of Jota’s life
“I am a determined person,” he said. “It is important that you believe in you, in your life, every aspect of your life.
“Never can one person tell me you can do this, or you can do that.
“The most important thing is focus on you, don’t think of these people. You work harder and you can be going up all your life.”
Jota underlines his point in his native Spanish, which translates to, “I have never been a person to follow the flock.”
He joined Celta Vigo when he was 13, but one of the biggest names in Spanish football, Luis Enrique, loaned him out.
There was a year in Real Madrid reserves and a successful loan to Eibar where Jota got the goal that took the club into La Liga for the first time as champions.
“The goal of Jota unleashed the madness,” said the report of the Eibar v Deportivo Alaves game four years ago, a left foot shot from outside the area. He likes a spectacular goal and if he can do the same for Birmingham as he did for Eibar, then Blues fans will put Jota up there on their Hallowed Player list alongside Trevor Francis and Christophe Dugarry.
A change of manager at Vigo brought a change of opinion and Jota was wanted back, but his self-confident nature decided otherwise and he went to Brentford.
When, as Bobby Robson would have put it, they thought he was daft as a brush, Jota said: “Many people think: Jota Peleteiro, the beautiful child of Celta, who goes to Madrid, who thinks it is a path of roses. And then England. And there is sh*t, people who tried to put obstacles and if you do not trust yourself, getting out of there is very difficult.” Today he says: “Some times in football there are a lot of factors.
“When I was in Spain I had offers for the first division, but it was a challenge for me to come to England, another language, all different.
“The first moment you can’t do anything. You can’t speak with your team-mates, you can’t go out.
Confidence
“I did not know Brentford but they give me confidence, they give me a project to come and fight for the play-offs. It was true because we did get to the playoffs.”
Brentford lost to Middlesbrough in the semi-finals of 2015, Jota again instrumental by making a goal and scoring one in a 3-0 win over Wigan that put Brentford fifth and into the postseason.
He should be in the promotion hunt again now. That was the schedule when he joined Birmingham, but Jota is closer to playing at Walsall next season than he is at Old Trafford.
Quizzical Spanish eyes will again be looking at Jota’s decision making.
“I did not know Brentford, but if a person ask me then for the clubs in the Championship, maybe I know everything in the Premier League, but not the second.
“There were some clubs going up last season from the Championship that I did not know.
“My father and me came to England, we stay four days with the owner of Brentford and they say it is a club to come to progress your career.
“Celta wanted me to re-sign. There was Getafe, Granada, but I don’t think of these possibilities. If I had stayed I would have stayed with Celta but we thought it was a great change to come to England.
“I thought ‘all these people think I’m crazy’. Well, we’ll see. If I want to leave I will leave. “I never think of a person if he likes me or don’t like me. It is not my problem.
“If you are thinking you want everyone to like you, you are thinking is everyone happy, will people say ‘hello’, that is difficult. I have no worries with any people like that anymore.”
After Ipswich yesterday, Birmingham have successive games in which they can save their neck - Bolton away and Burton at home.
Following that it gets trickier with some of the Championship’s quality teams to deal with, Bristol City, Wolves, Sheffield United and Fulham, plus improving QPR.
Jota knew about Birmingham City from his friend Borja Oubina.
He probably knows more about Oubina than any Birmingham fan.
“Birmingham City we know in Spain as a big club,” says Jota. “It was in the Premier League.
Injury
“I have a team-mate who played here, Borja Oubina. He broke his knee his first day and he went back to Spain. He told me about Birmingham, a big club, an historic club.”
Oubina, a defensive midfielder on loan from Celta Vigo in 2007, actually played in two games in the Premier League for Birmingham.
He came on as a sub against Bolton and after 13 minutes of his next game against Liverpool damaged his cruciate knee ligaments and was never the same player again.
Alex McLeish, the last manager to win something for Birmingham with the League Cup seven years ago, signed and lost Oubina, but Jota is looking for a better future under Monk.
“I don’t think a lot in the past because you can’t change anything, but it is true when you come for the manager who signed you, they pay a lot of money, I had a lot of expectation,” says Jota.
“It is difficult after the manager calls you and he says I want you to be one of the players always in my team. With Harry it was very good.
“I am grateful to him because he gave me the opportunity, but it is true with the next manager (Cotterill) I haven’t a good feeling when he signed the first day.
“I continued working, keep believing. Now with Garry Monk I am very happy. I have the confidence.
“I think of the months I am working in the dark because I don’t play, but now we can see the difference.”