On 2001, May the 27th, the lad had been outstanding brilliant in youth teams of the Red-and-whites academy as also did for Spain National team. It all happened some weeks before Fernando won the U-16 Euro Tournament in England being the scorer in final game vs France and awarded as MVP. It all came together to get the call-up for Atlético de Madrid senior squad. The side was competing for promotion to Primera division after a shock relegation in last season.

These are Fernando memories of such an important moment in career: “After the European under-16s I played in the Champions Cup and the Spanish Cup with the youth team. After the cup game I ran into Iñaki Sáez and he told me I was going to play for the under-18s, and the week after that Futre called me to train with the first team. I was going to play in the pre-season games so it was a good idea for me to get acclimatized. I started training on the Wednesday, on Saturday I was on the team-sheet and on the Sunday I made my debut. It was all really quick”.

“It was an early kick-off, the ground was full, and it was really hot. We were winning 1-0, and we needed to win so as not to lose our chance to go up. Everyone was really tense except me, I was just dying to play. At the end of the game I had a really strange feeling, that even though I was still so young I’d achieved what I’d always dreamed about. I couldn’t believe it. When I was a kid I thought that once I got to this point everything would be easy but I was wrong, it was only the first step”.