Sheffield Wednesday's Pol Valentín on his Neymar-discovering father and could his big brother have joined him at Hillsborough?

It’s no ordinary conversation between a son playing football outside of his native country and his doting dad back home either.

For the Valentín family, football is all they know. It is in the blood.

Pol’s elder brother Gerard – also a right-back/right winger – is a professional with Spanish Segunda Division outfit Huesca.

They are following in the footsteps of dad Albert, an ex–player who has forged a second successful career in football working primarily in recruitment/scouting.

Having worked previously for Barcelona, Espanyol and Real Zaragoza, Valentín senior – who had a spell as sporting CEO at another famous European name in Olympique de Marseille – is now working in Qatar as academy manager at Al-Rayyan.

In his time as a scouting chief at Barca, Valentín’s major achievement was a head-turner, he is credited with bringing no less than Neymar to the Nou Camp.

It’s fair to say that he certainly has an eye for a player, then.

His technical experience – allied to the typical ‘tough love’ employed by many fathers towards their sons – also ensures that praise on how they are doing in the workplace really has to be earned.

That said, the bad feedback is always worthwhile and Valentín senior makes it his business to analyse footage of his sons from his vantage point in the Gulf.

Valentín said: "I always try and speak to my father after the game about football.

"He tries to help me and always tells me the bad things in the game and says ‘You need to improve in this, this and this.’

"He says ‘I know you are intelligent and know the things that you did good in the game; you don’t need to listen to good, but bad things to improve.’

"Always, if he is looking, he is not looking at the game, with his focus on me and not the game. He’ll say ‘you need to close more or shuffle more, you can run more forward or pass more forward.’”

He may be happy to dispense with technical advice, but Valentín senior did not try and push his son in the direction of Yorkshire when Wednesday called in the summer.

That call was down to the 26-year-old, old enough to make his own decisions, as the saying goes.

If circumstances had been different, the Owls defender could have been joined at the club by his big brother, who worked under former head coach Xisco Munoz at Huesca.

Valentín added: "My father tries to help us. But never puts pressure on me or my brother and has always said ‘If you want to be a football player, it’s your decision.’

"My brother; maybe the same with Xisco, but I don’t know what happened, 100 per cent. Xisco was my brother’s coach in Spain one year ago before he came here. Xisco loved my brother as a player.

"Maybe for me it would be a very good situation, so I have the family close. But this is football."

A charming, personable interviewee and someone whose English has come on considerably after readily admitting that he barely knew a word before heading to this country last summer, Valentín’s Owls story has been a reward for character, perseverance and old-fashioned hard work.

In the autumn, things looked bleak. Wednesday could not buy a win and were haemorrhaging confidence and the coach who brought him to the club in Munoz soon departed.

Valentín was entitled to contemplate if he would be heading out the same way by the time the January window opened. The narrative at the time surely pointed to that for several of the Owls’ summer signings who looked anything but Championship-ready.

Creditably, Valentín found his second wind and has proved he is made of the right stuff in getting up to Championship speed during the Rohl revolution. He has also assimilated into life in Sheffield, even if understanding his team-mate's English has its daily challenges.

He continued: “I will be honest when Xisco left, I was a little bit scared because Xisco signed me.

"When you are player outside of your country, you think it will be more difficult not being English. Maybe at first an English coach would try and put in English players. But you know you are a good player if you play and train hard.

"It takes time to adapt to the language, league and style because you are new in the league and team and nobody knows what you can do on the pitch and maybe you need to do more than the others. In my first games, it was ‘Who is this guy?’

"When I came here, I didn’t do pre-season and was in my final recovery (from an injury). My best condition (aspect) is my physical (quality).

"Maybe at the beginning, it was hard as I did a lot of extra work, but now I feel the player I am and I can now show the player I am."