It feels a bit strange saying this out loud, but I am slowly starting to get used to things that once felt completely impossible to me. Going to press conferences, watching players train up close, seeing Xabi Alonso a few meters away… if someone had told me a year ago that this would become part of my routine, I honestly would never have believed them.

That day started like many of the others. We were attending another training session and press conference, watching the players joke around, train, and prepare for the upcoming match. It is always interesting seeing football from that perspective instead of just through a screen. Even now, moments like those still hit me sometimes.

But what made that day different happened quietly.

At the back of the balcony, while everyone was focused on the training session, I suddenly heard a very familiar voice doing a live match preview right next to me. I turned around and there he was: Djamel Djaballi.

It was not actually the first time I had seen him around these press conferences, but it was the first time I finally had the courage to go speak to him.

He might not be someone many people recognize here in Madrid, but back home, it is completely different. Ever since I was a kid watching football games, he was always there covering Real Madrid CF for beIN SPORTS MENA. His voice became part of so many football memories growing up that suddenly standing next to him and having an actual conversation felt honestly hard to process.

What surprised me the most was how kind and approachable he was. Despite clearly having work to do, he still spent around fifteen minutes talking to us. He walked us through parts of his career journey, spoke about his son, shared stories from the industry, and gave us advice on how we can try to make our way into this crazy world of sports media.

And I think that is what stayed with me the most afterward.

Sometimes when you admire people from afar, especially in media, you imagine them as unreachable figures because you only ever see them through a screen. But moments like this remind you that everyone in this industry started somewhere. Everyone was once the young person dreaming of being closer to the game.

Walking away from that conversation, I realized how “inside the game” I suddenly feel lately. Not in the sense that I have made it already, far from it, but in the sense that I am finally experiencing the environments I always dreamed about from a distance as a football fan growing up.

So this article is really just an appreciation post.

An appreciation for Djamel Djaballi taking the time to speak to students like us despite his busy day. And also an appreciation for this journey I am currently living, because sometimes I genuinely have to stop for a second and remind myself that all of this is actually real.

Forever grateful.