Dani Parejo Blogging About QPR and England

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Guillembalague - The Dani Parejo blog: Welcome to England

Dani Parejo, the 19 year old Real Madrid and Spanish youth international who signed for QPR on a two year loan deal in the summer has agreed to write a weekly blog exclusively for GuillemBalague.com.

Dani was recently described by none other than Alfredo di Stefano as Real Madrid’s best young player, and in this, his first post, he tells us how he's settling in to his new life in London and about his introduction to English football...

Dani's Diary: Welcome to England!

I've only been here a couple of months and I'm still getting used to life in London and adjusting to a completely different lifestyle.

It all feels very different and even a simple thing like a car ride can be an experience. Driving around London the first few times was pretty scary: it's crazy in London and everyone's driving on the wrong side of the road. The first time we did it I was convinced someone was going to hit us and spent most of the journey with my eyes shut - thankfully my Dad was at the wheel, as I haven't got my license yet.

I'm starting to settle in though. We spent the first couple of weeks living in a hotel and that got to be a little difficult after a while. It was miles away from the centre of London, right out in the suburbs and it's impossible to feel at home when you are living out of a suitcase.

The club have sorted us out with a house now. It's in Brentford , nice and peaceful and right next to the river. I can practically open my bedroom window and dive in, if I wanted to. Looking at the colour of it, I'm not too sure that would be a good idea though. And I'd probably freeze to death.

Did I mention the cold. What's that all about? It's September !

I've already had a few visitors from Spain and that has really helped. I'm not missing things from back home too much as my friends have been keeping me supplied with my favourite food from Spain and bring over hams, meats and oils, that sort of stuff to make me feel at home. Mind you, they have to: 'cause if they don't, I don't let them in.

I've become mates with one of my new team mates, Emmanuel Ledesma, he's from Argentina and it's obviously a big help having him around and speaking the same language. We'll play the odd game on the Playstation, spend some free afternoons clothes shopping in the centre of London and just hang out. I really need to start taking advantage of being in London though, it's a great City and there's so much to check out, I'm not sure where to start.

Life at QPR has been good so far. I don't know why, but I thought that training was going to be very different to what I'm used to back home in Spain. It's not all that different, however, and I guess that's because there are so many foreign coaches and players moving between clubs that we're all learning from each other.

The number of games being played makes a difference though and when you end up playing two games a week, there's little or no recovery time so a lot of training sessions end up being light workouts.

There isn't often the time for more intensive training sessions as we'll have a light workout the day before a game, a light session or warm-down the day after, and sometimes there's only enough time for one full training session in between games.

Physically I feel good at the moment, but I've been warned that I'll start to feel it in my legs come March or April, especially after spending the winter playing on muddier pitches than maybe I'm used to.

Things are going well for Rangers , we're fourth at the moment, I've played in 5 league games and we've won three of them.

I won't forget my league debut in a hurry, it was against Barnsley and I started the game as a sub. I came on about with about 20 minutes to go and with one of my first touches of the ball in British football I got hit with a really bad challenge. Bang! Welcome to England. The other guy got a straight red for it though, so I guess not every tackle is going to be that bad.

Mind you, in my last game, this guy came flying in, studs up, and raked them down my leg. You could see his stud marks afterwards. Not even a foul apparently. I lost it, and one of my team mates had to tell me to calm down, or it was going to be me that ended up getting booked. I guess I'm just going to have to learn to adapt to that side of the game here , players get more protection in Spain, and I'll just have to get used to it.


Dani Parejo - Guillembalague