Miguel Britos: ‘I understand why the fans may think I’m crazy’

Due to a slightly extended full-sized, full-on practice game and an impromptu half-hour team session of Yoga, Miguel Britos is an hour and a half late for our scheduled interview at the London Colney training ground on Friday. Almost as late, some would say, as two virtually identical tackles he made in the first half at Deepdale, the second of which he was yellow carded for.

It takes a brave man to ask him, while he is sitting down with Alessandro Diamanti, Jose Manuel Jurado and Victor Ibarbo digesting his lunch, when he will be free to execute the commitment the club generously facilitated. Given the evidence of his last game for Napoli and his first for Watford, you half expect the bowl of fruit he says he will have first to end up on the canteen floor in response to this request. More likely is that Britos is a man who likes to make sure he refuels properly after training and is enjoying reminiscing about life in Serie A, with Diamanti and Ibarbo. He probably also knows the line of questioning that awaits him. We tread carefully for the first three quarters of the interview, loosening him up with a few full tosses and half volleys outside off stump before we give him more of a searching examination with some short-pitch stuff.

The interview is facilitated by the club’s translator, Lorenzo, which is never ideal as they fail to sometimes convey the true meaning of the words and the translator can, if he wishes, censor anything controversial. Britos has a a grasp of English and you wonder, for a moment, if he is doing a Mauricio Pochettino, during his days as manager of Southampton, and hiding behind his translator. He tells us, in English, he has found an apartment for his wife and daughter, what an “amazing player” the great Enzo Francescoli, his countryman, was and what a “good team” he remembers Swansea being when he lined up against them for Napoli. He also knows exactly what we are talking about when we discuss, finally, the red card at Preston North End. We wave an imaginary card, like the South Americans tend to do, for added effect.

“It was not a red card,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe it was a yellow card. It shouldn’t have been a straight red, maybe a yellow card. It was never a three games because I only push him.”

That’s the thing, Miguel. You can’t push players over here, especially not when you are already on a yellow card and not if the referee has been brushing up on the players he will be in charge of by searching you on YouTube.

The fact the club did not, in the end, appeal the decision tells its own story. He didn’t really have a leg to stand on. At best, it was a yellow card and, as we know, two yellows make a red. It was better to be safe than sorry and risk getting extra games added for a frivolous appeal. Britos knew he did something wrong as he apologised to his teammates in the dressing room.

“I regretted it a lot because it was something I didn’t want to do,” he said of the shove in the penalty box on his marker. “Secondly, I regretted it because I realised was not going to play in Premier League for a few more weeks. I just want to play games.”

He will miss the next two matches, at home to Swansea and away at Newcastle. Britos is available for selection for the game at Crystal Palace when the restoration of his relationship with the fans, particularly the near 400 who made the long trip to Preston, begins.

“I understand why they feel like this,” Britos said. “It’s not something I do [intentionally], I am not like this.”

Steven Berghuis, who has only been marginally less peripheral than Britos, backs this up. “What I see he is more of a footballing defender,” the Dutch winger told us last month.

We are not sure Alvaro Morata would agree. He was floored by a brutal headbutt from Britos in the dying seconds of the penultimate Serie A game of last season.

“It was the first time it happened to me,” he said. “It’s not something I am happy with. The next day I spoke with the Napoli team and I said I wanted to have a tweet sent out to say I was sorry to everyone.”

What on earth prompted such a violent reaction, apart from the fact “he pushed me during the game”?

“It came in a time that was not the best,” he said. “We had just been eliminated from the Europa League, we were then eliminated by Lazio in the Italian Cup and then we missed out on Champions League qualification. The president kept us away for 20 days from our families because he was not happy with how we were playing. All this accumulated together and I did something I should not have done.”

On the evidence of 24 minutes in his company Britos is not the thug his disciplinary record suggests he is. He is more angular than you expect, very polite, softly spoken and has a warm smile. The goatee beard he sports just adds to the stereotype of him being your typical rugged South American defender. Contrast him, say, with the angelic looking Gabriele Angella. But a record of 36 yellow cards in the last five seasons does not look great and suggests why he has never been capped by his country, despite playing in Serie A for the past six seasons.

The last three have been spent playing with Raul Albiol, the Spain international defender who worked with Quique Sanchez Flores at Getafe and Valencia.

“Albiol speaks very well about Quique,” said Britos. “And I know Quique called him to ask him about me.”

The telephone line was also hot between Britos and Valon Behrami when Watford firmed up their interest in the Uruguayan centre half. They enjoyed two seasons together at Napoli.

“I started to speak to Behrami around four days before I came here,” Britos said. “He spoke to me about Watford, England in general and he spoke to me really well about Watford. I am at a very good team and there is a very nice group. I hope to get over this stage where I cannot play so I can start playing again.”

So will Gino Pozzo who showed his faith in the defender by handing him a three-year contract in the summer just days after the player turned 30. Udinese, owned by Giampaolo Pozzo, will have come up against Britos several times.

“There were a lot of teams interested but the only team I really tried with was Watford,” Britos said. “I wanted to play in the Premier League. I had one year left with Napoli so I knew after that year I was going to leave. Mr Pozzo was interested in me but it was also the time Napoli were interested in Allan from Udinese. They wanted to do an exchange. I know Gino a little and they [the family] are very well known in Italy. They are very well known in Italy because Udinese is now known as a team that fights to get to Europe. They buy very young players and sell them on. I wouldn’t be able to compare [Udinese and Watford] because I’ve only seen them from the outside.”

Likewise with most Watford fans when it comes to judging Britos. Only 369 brave souls saw him in the flesh at Deepdale and before his brainless second-half dismissal, he looked a very upright defender and very comfortable with the ball at this sweet left foot. He also pops up with the odd goal, as Juventus and AC Milan will tell you. He is not, it must be remembered, the first player to be sent off on his Hornets debut: Alexander Merkel and Samba Diakité are two recent examples. “Now I understand how the game in England is played,” said Britos. Should anything happen to Craig Cathcart and Sebastian Prödl you sincerely hope he does.

Click below to see the kind of treatment Britos and the rest of the squad receive at London Colney.

FEATURE: "That's the kind of commitment that Mr Pozzo has for our players" #WatfordFC http://t.co/ZP7s6Yeiwo pic.twitter.com/O5GVqnpuaD — WD Sport (@WDSport_) September 3, 2015

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