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“Pair of extra socks, pair of extra boxers”, and that, Cyle Larin says, is pretty much that. Well, it is normally. This time, it is a little different. There is a smile and Real Mallorca’s top scorer this season, Canada’s top scorer of all time, says: “Win that first game and you got to stay longer.”
More boxers, more socks, maybe more history too. Win that first game, Thursday night’s Spanish Super Cup semi-final, and they will still be there on Sunday night, 5,000km from home and 90 minutes from the third trophy in their 108 years.
For Spain’s biggest clubs the Super Cup is not a priority even though it was made for them, two more games and many more miles in a calendar that already has enough of them, and played in Saudi Arabia, an aberration that has been normalised. For Mallorca, it is a bit different and the reason is simple. “It’s a trophy,” Larin says. “We went to a cup final and didn’t win. Now we go there to potentially win one.
“Being there is important to players, the club and the fans. You’re playing the world’s best and that’s important for me too.”
Cup winners in 2003, Mallorca won the Super Cup in 1998 but have lost five finals, including a Cup Winners’ Cup at Villa Park in 1999 and last year’s Copa del Rey on penalties. That hurt but it came with access to another cup where they could meet Athletic Club again in the final or Barcelona – if they beat Real Madrid.
It’s a big if, they know, and for Larin it would mean getting the better of Antonio Rüdiger. “Madrid are favourites, but it’s football,” Larin says. “I played against Rüdiger last year. We lost both 1-0. He scored in one.
“He was tough. He is a top defender and you have to be at your best to get anything out of him. He was the best defender in the world then. But I was in a different moment. I don’t think I was in the form I am in now. It will be a bit different. I can play with confidence.”
Confidence is the word and it comes up often as Larin talks in a soft, slow voice, something almost gentle about him. He is more at ease now, more settled. On the opening night of this season, Mallorca held Madrid to a draw – they might have got more – and they have been a revelation since, the team that fought relegation now occupying a European place.
With two assists and five goals, Larin has been at the heart of it. Often a substitute last season despite being the club’s record signing, handed the difficult role of competing with the cult hero Abdón Prats, he already has more than in 2023-24, directly delivering 12 points.
“When I came last year, it was difficult. There was a different playing style to what I was used to,” he says. “We didn’t play as much with the ball, it was more fighting and fighting and flicking the ball on. I came from Valladolid where it was more playing, more crosses. It was difficult, although we had a great cup run. Now we’re better in the league.
“We [Vedat Muriqi and Larin] are playing together more – last year sometimes we did, sometimes we didn’t – and it has worked well. It’s a different system. The new coach [Jagoba Arrasate] came in and gave me the confidence to play free.”
That confidence might not always manifest itself on the surface, but it is there. Larin stops and smiles. “I am very quiet, I don’t really speak a lot,” he says. “But I know he trusts me to perform. You feel like you can do more on the pitch. You just do it. You don’t think about it, don’t think: ‘OK, if I do this the fans are going to say something …’ It just happens.
“You make a mistake but you go and do it again because you know you are capable and next time it will pay off. Confidence is important to any player because when you don’t have it you’re hesitant, you think a lot and it affects your game.
“A lot of players are conscious of what fans are saying but when you’re in that rhythm you don’t really even hear them. For a player there does come a time when it plays on your conscious but you have to ignore it and keep going. There will always be people who have their say but you know what you’re capable of. When you’re watching the game, it is easy to say he should do this or he should do that. There are things people think are easy to do, but on the pitch it is harder than it looks.
“Some players dive with the pressure but I like it. I played at Besiktas: that’s the most pressure you can get around the world. Some thrive off it, some need some time. Me, I’m OK under pressure.”
Larin was raised in Brampton, Ontario. His dad rode horses and his mum worked at an academy training pilots. “There was a lot of hockey on the streets,” he says, and he played a bit too. Mostly, though, he played football. “There was talent there but we didn’t have anywhere to play. When I was very young I would play at my dad’s work, on like a basketball court thing out the back. Usually, it was parks. I played a house league, had a few years at a Brampton team, then went to the Sigma academy in Mississauga.”
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An admirer of Didier Drogba, he dreamed of the Premier League. He still does: “Every year I think of playing in the Premier League, not just growing up. It’s the best league in the world. When I was younger I wanted to play there and these last few years I have always wanted to play there.”
Although he did not end up in England, he did head to the US as a teenager, trained in Germany and played in Turkey and Belgium before coming to Spain, a toughness there that belies the shyness. “It’s not easy. You’re young, you go to all these countries, a new team, a new place, having to get your life sorted out off the pitch. You figure it out along the way, you become stronger. People think it’s easy, that you just play football but there’s another side to it.
“When you turn up at a new club, you’re feeling out the team, the guys, the staff, the surroundings. They brought you for a reason. It’s a process. Sometimes it works straight away, sometimes it doesn’t. If you know yourself and you know what you’re capable of, with time it will come.”
Now it has and with it another chance at a trophy. “One game at a time,” Larin says. “I’m only focused on Madrid. It’s a tournament. You have to win to move on and you don’t even know who you would play next.
“I don’t really think about the game until the last day or so. We do video analysis and tactics but it’s not until a few hours before that I really start thinking about it, locking it in, going over what I am going to do. If you think of the game from the first day of the week, it can bring stress.
“Most the time, I’m with my family. I do play Call of Duty with friends back home. I have a team we play with. The time difference means they have to be up at [bad] times to play.
“I always stick a book in my bag. I have a couple ebooks, you can read or listen to a couple of chapters, and if you go on my Netflix I’ve watched most everything on there. I watch a few in Spanish. Sometimes it’s hard but sometimes it clicks, so I just have to do it more frequently.
“When game time comes, we’ll be ready. It’s important, a competition for us to show the year we are having, where you can win a trophy. We’re going there to potentially win a cup.”
