Football lost a promise and basketball gained a star. María Conde opted for the basket when the future opened two doors for her. As a child she played everything with her brother Diego, who was almost two years younger. Football, basketball, swimming, judo, horse riding… They both kicked the ball in Madrid’s Carabanchel when two clubs wanted to sign María and she, a girl, had to make the first big decision of her life: football at Atlético de Madrid or basketball at Estudiantes. She won the orange ball and success accompanied her. Today she is one of the best Spanish basketball players and has returned to play with the national team after overcoming an eight-month layoff due to an Achilles tendon injury. Diego continued in football, between the posts, he coached at Atlético and is a goalkeeper for Villarreal after playing for Getafe and Leganés. María and Diego are a curious case of two brothers in the elite of two different disciplines, and at the same time the best mutual support for how they understand what it feels like up there. For better and especially for worse.
“Every now and then I cry, I don’t know where basketball is now,” María Conde wrote last January when she had the strength to put together a few words. She had just turned 28 in a hospital in Valencia, undergoing surgery for the rupture of the Achilles tendon in her left leg suffered in the Euroleague with her team, UK Prague, in Zaragoza. “I wish a thousand times it had happened to me and not you,” responded his brother, who was recovering from a sprained knee. There is no one better to understand than someone who has walked the same path since childhood.
“We are very lucky, a very beautiful relationship because we are brothers and because we talk about the same codes”, says Diego, waiting a few minutes in the Villarreal goal; “Maria has had a difficult path. She faced many things on her own, she played abroad, she matured abroad. We have always both had the same work ethic, that of preparing ourselves as best we could from an early age with physiotherapists, nutritionists, psychologists… This way of understanding sport unites us a lot. We have that chemistry and that relationship. There are many things in which no one will understand me like her. When we need each other we don’t need to explain how we feel.” María agrees: “We give each other the right words that the other needs to hear. Sport is a roller coaster and we have traveled hand in hand.”
The forward added four points and two assists last Friday in a 61-77 loss to Italy in the International Line Tournament, in Cadiz, and yesterday also contributed four points and three assists in another loss to Olympic runner-up France (68-72). There were two preparation duels for Spain before they qualified for the 2026 World Cup in Berlin next March. Conde is a pillar of the team, 78 times in the national team, gold at the 2017 Eurobasket and silver in 2023.
The injury that made him miss the last European Championship is starting to be behind him. In full recovery he signed for the Italian Familia Schio, his last stop after Estudiantes and Girona in Spain, and for the University of Florida, Wisla Krakow, Polkowice and Prague abroad. Condé returned in style at the end of September, winner and MVP of the Italian Super Cup. “I’m learning day after day what the body needs,” he explains upon his return; “During an injury the body changes not only in the injured area, but in everything. There are many months left. The rest of the body stops, relaxes. Now every time a match ends I feel differently”, he analyzes.
The worst moment, he remembers, was the snap when it broke. “Many things crossed my mind, the time without playing, when I would return and if I would be the same. The first two months I couldn’t stop. It was difficult to see myself so dependent on my parents when I was used to being alone. This requires a process of adaptation and sadness.” It was also an opportunity to return home, to Madrid, close to his family. “I’ve lived in a spiral between club, national team and club. Since I was 18 I hadn’t been home for more than two or three weeks at a time and now I’ve been there for seven months. It was a very nice time. I had no doubts about the bonds we have, a network that when things go well is strong, and when things go bad it’s very strong. It was time to give it to them. We athletes are the ones who aren’t there,” says Conde.
The nerves are still in my stomach. “And I like this, it means I missed it. Sometimes the head goes very fast and the body follows…”. Today María Conde smiles again. And if something goes wrong, she knows that her brother Diego will be there, and she will be there for him, like those children who played “cakes and chops” and wrapped themselves in dreams.
