Sid Lowe: So are we wrong to judge the process based on the results, even though the process intends to achieve the result?

Juanma Lillo: You can’t validate the process through the results. Human beings tend to venerate what finished well, not what was done well. We attack what ended up badly, not what was done badly. The media does that. And beyond the possibility that maybe you don’t have the capacity to judge whether the methodological process is the correct one, it’s flawed to judge on those grounds. The same process can have very different effects; and sometimes the same effects come from totally different ‘causes’. Bayern Munich are a great team in the 90th minute (in 1999) when they are winning the Champions League and in the 92nd minute they are rubbish. How can that be? That moment, given the huge dimension of everything that went with it, serves to illustrate this point and so much more besides. I remember the fourth official leaning to his right to hold back the Bayern players who were ready to run on the pitch and celebrate… and a moment later, leaning to his left to hold back the United players who were ready to run onto the pitch and celebrate. All this in a minute. The thing is, everyone’s a genius after the event. I call them prophets of the past. And yet they are wrong to even evaluate the process in the light solely of how it came out in the end and, on top of that, to keep imposing demands.

SL: Has the environment around the game changed?

JL: Yes, the garnish has eaten the steak. There’s more pressure, more of what was peripheral has become central. Societies are being transformed and that is felt in everything. With every passing day, people spend less time on their life and more time on other people’s, because their own life is frightening. New technology allows self-delusion to be easier than it has ever been before.