Managing a top-level professional soccer club is a one-in-a-million job. Many aspire to do so, but so few actually turn that dream into a reality. For those that do realize that dream, the path they take to get there is often long and winding.
Rubi, the newly appointed manager of FC Cincinnati's summer friendly opponents RCD Espanyol, can certainly relate.
Born in Vilassar de Mar just outside of Barcelona, 48-year-old Joan Francesc Ferrer Sicilia is best known by the nickname Rubi. And like many managers before him, Rubi began his career in soccer as a player. He got his start in 1989 in the Spanish sixth tier at his small hometown club, UE Vilassar de Mar. But the diminutive winger never climbed any higher than the third tier during a playing career that spanned nine seasons.
He wasn’t out of the game long though, and he returned home to UE Vilassar de Mar in 2001 to take the reigns as the club's manager. Playing then in the fourth-tier Tercera División, Rubi spent three seasons guiding his boyhood club before two short, subsequent stints at other Tercera División clubs.
It was his fourth coaching job, however, that saw him first connect with RCD Espanyol. In 2005, the Barcelona-based club placed Rubi in charge of its reserve squad. And in his first season in charge, he guided them to a second-place finish in the Tercera and promotion to third division, Segunda B.
Helping to Espanyol B back to Spain’s third tier wasn’t the last time Rubi steered a club up a level in Spanish football, either. Last season, the Catalan coach inspired second-division SD Huesca to the club's highest ever finish. Together, they finished champions of the Segunda and earned Huesca its first-ever promotion to the Spanish top flight.
It was that promotion that earned Rubi a return to Espanyol, only this time it was to take charge of its first team in La Liga.
However, his new position at Espanyol isn’t Rubi's first managerial stop in Spain’s top league.
Rubi previously took charge at Levante during the 2015-16 season and Sporting Gijón in 2017. Though both of those campaigns ended with his side relegated, guiding Huesca to its first-ever season in the first division in the very next campaign demonstrated Rubi's acumen and talent as a manager.
