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Apocalypse in Aragón: How one of Spain’s deadliest fires set two promising careers on wildly different paths

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment

This article first appeared in Issue Forty Three of The Blizzard

Up or down?

It was a hell of a choice to make, and there was only a split second to make it. He hadn’t heard the pounding on his door, but he’d woken soon after when his slumbering senses told him something wasn’t right. The acrid smoke had seeped under the door and in through the air conditioning vents, rapidly filling his room.

Bursting into the corridor, he’d searched in vain for the emergency stairs, instead arriving at the hotel’s main staircase. The logical choice would be to go down, but thick plumes of black smoke poured from below — the stairs’ elegant carpets serving as tinder, powering the flames’ ascent.  

It would have to be up — maybe there would be an exit up there. But the second floor was arranged as confusingly as the first. The smoke grew denser and the heat unbearably intense. Reluctant to go higher, he found a room with a balcony and took refuge there. For a few brief seconds, he could finally just about breathe and feel the relative cool of the morning air on his scorched face before the intake of oxygen and the cries from the street below brought him to the realisation he had a very urgent decision to make. Although the way Real Zaragoza’s new signing, José Ramon Badiola, saw it — it wasn’t really a decision at all. He simply had to jump.  

The Hotel Corona de Aragón was, as the name suggests, the jewel in the crown of the city of Zaragoza. The region’s only five-star hotel boasted ten floors of luxury guest accommodation and lushly appointed meeting rooms; a fine dining restaurant as well as a gym with a swimming pool and sauna, a hairdresser and beauty salon. There was even a crèche facility for pets. It was the natural port of call for anyone who was anyone doing business in the capital of Aragón.

As was the case on the night of the 11th of July 1979, occupancy rates were regularly bolstered by events at the city’s General Military Academy. A passing out ceremony had brought a well-heeled crowd to town, and 190 of the hotel’s 237 rooms were occupied.

Graduating as a second lieutenant was one of General Francisco Franco’s grandsons, Cristóbal, which meant three generations of the dictator’s family were guests at the hotel. Franco’s widow, Carmen Polo, was joined by their only child, Carmen Franco, whose teenage children, Jaime and Aránzazu, had also come to Zaragoza to attend their brother’s ceremony. 

Another guest connected to the former regime was General Alfonso Armada, a staunch supporter of Franco who would go on to be one of the main protagonists of the failed military coup of 1981, for which he would be sentenced to 30 years in prison. 

Other unmistakably military names such as Colonel Rodrigo Peñalosa Esteban-Infante, Captain Ángel Hernández-Perez and the former Olympic equestrian, Lieutenant Colonel Alfonso Queipo de Llano y Acuña also featured on the guest register that night, alongside the less elaborate but nonetheless notable name of José Maria Zarraga. Zarraga had won the first five editions of the European Cup as a player with Real Madrid and was in Zaragoza in his role as sporting director of Deportivo Alavés.

Languishing in Segunda and in need of financial relief, Alavés had sent a delegation to the city to complete the transfer of two of their bright young talents to Real Zaragoza for a combined sum of 35 million pesetas (€210,000). Half of the fee had been secured early that evening as 23-year-old forward Badiola happily signed on the dotted line. 

Fresh from a season where he’d scored ten goals from the wing, Badiola was a player very much on an upward curve. Having joined Alavés from Athletic Club’s youth set-up, he had sparkled in his two seasons in Vitoria, his new club surprised that Athletic had let him go. 

Quick and comfortable on either flank, Badiola had a trademark ability to quickly deliver crosses with the outside of either foot and had attracted the attention of several first division clubs. But it was Zaragoza he saw as a club that could match his ambitions. He was delighted to seal the transfer and was looking forward to moving to the city of Zaragoza with his long-term partner, Zarraga’s daughter.

The second part of the deal was proving slightly problematic. The Argentine forward and future World Cup winner, Jorge Valdano, was involved in a minor dispute with the Alavés board and, by way of making a point, had refused to travel with the delegation as arranged. Valdano did not check in to the hotel with the rest of the party, who dined in the bustling restaurant, toasting the deal that brought fresh funds to Alavés and progressed the career of Badiola.

After a nightcap in the bar, the group retired for the night to their rooms on the first floor, unaware of the Dantesque scenes they would awake to.

The churros fryer in the hotel’s Formigal café had a history of flaring up. But as it was switched on for the breakfast service that Thursday morning, it malfunctioned and ignited with more force than ever. Four staff members attempted to tackle the fire with extinguishers, but the strength of the flames powered by some 20 litres of oil proved impossible to quell and staff abandoned the kitchen, raising the alarm to colleagues in neighbouring rooms and calling the fire brigade.

ABC reported that fire crews arrived within minutes, but the fire had already spread “with extraordinary speed,” roaring through the adjoining Piccadilly Bar, fuelled by its wooden furniture and carpeted floors. “The fire arrived quickly at the building’s main staircase, which became a chimney which spread the fire and smoke to the floors above.” The main entrance provided a source of air that further fanned the flames.

The hotel proved disastrously ill-equipped to deal with the fire. The Chief Architect of the Zaragoza Fire Service later reported that the two emergency staircases were not accessible to guests and could “only have been known to staff”. One had to be accessed through a room that had no signs of an exit on the door. The other was hidden by rooms on each floor that essentially functioned as storerooms with each door marked: ‘Privado’. 


Zaragoza police concluded that staff failed to fully initiate the hotel alarm before leaving the hotel. Neither was there a protocol in place to shut down the air conditioning system, meaning deadly smoke was efficiently distributed into rooms as guests slept.

The blaze was soon evident on the first floor, where the party from Vitoria occupied a block of rooms. The first to react was Zarraga, who provided the news agency EFE with a stunning first-person account that appeared in several of the next day’s newspapers. 

“It was about 8.30 am; I was just about to wash when I noticed a lot of smoke had come into the room along with a strong burning smell. I opened the door, and there was a fire. A huge fire. I went back in and quickly put on some clothes, then looked for an exit. I didn’t think to go to the main stairway, and that is what saved me. I ran into a waiter, and he took me through a different exit, one that led us straight to the street.”

“On the street, I noticed I had lost my shoes, but I ran in pure desperation looking for the rooms where the president and the secretary were. I screamed at them to alert them to the fire. They already knew but had been too terrified to react right away.”

Alavés president, Hipólito Lastra, and club secretary Luis María Calvo made their escape, but their thumps on the door of Badiola’s room, just as those of Zarraga’s, went unanswered. 

The scenes surrounding the hotel were apocalyptic. US Air Force helicopters scrambled from the nearby base and rescued those that had made it to the hotel’s roof terrace, depositing them safely in the nearby bull ring. Soldiers were mobilised to cordon off a nearby subterranean deposit of 150,000 litres of petrol. Several dissident groups opportunistically claimed responsibility for the fire leading to several other hotels being evacuated as a precaution.  


Some fire crews attempted to rescue those trapped on balconies by ladder; others provided life nets on which to jump. La Vanguardia recounted the horrific scene of two young parents with no alternative but to drop their young daughter from the sixth floor onto one such net. The girl did not survive the fall.

Others felt they had no option but to jump whether they had a net to aim for or not. The concierge of a nearby apartment block told reporters that he’d witnessed four different people jump to their death.

Badiola’s decision to go up a level had made his escape more complicated, but a fire crew had given him a net to aim for as he sized up his leap from the second-floor balcony. He found his target but rebounded, sustaining a severe head trauma. He went into cardiac arrest and had to be given 45 minutes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation while being rushed to hospital.


Initial news broadcasts reported Badiola amongst the dead, a conclusion Zarraga also came to upon seeing him. “They told me that the injured were at the Hospital Provincial, so I ran there — petrified. There I found him. He was unconscious, burnt and blackened. They were saying something about asphyxiation, and I thought he was dead. I ran to tell the others, and only when we returned we received the reassuring news that he was alive.”


Valdano, for his part, had driven to Zaragoza that morning unaware of the hell that was unfolding until he approached the old town. There, the circling of helicopters and the wail of sirens told him something was amiss.  He rushed to the offices of Real Zaragoza, where he was stunned to hear what had happened.  

Due to his reservation at the hotel, at one stage, Valdano’s name appeared on a list of those presumed missing. It took several frantic phone calls to reassure people in Vitoria and his family in Argentina that he was safe. His belligerence with the board had saved him.


Firefighters eventually brought the fire to a halt just before midday but not before a death toll that would reach 78. The majority died from asphyxiation; others were killed in their attempts to jump to safety. More than a hundred were injured. Badiola could only count his blessings that he was in the latter category –– but he now faced the fight to save his career.

The remains of the Hotel Corona de Aragón after the fire of 12th July 1979 , EFE/ aa

Badiola was discharged from hospital a month later. A plan was made to allow him to return to his hometown of Ondarroa for a month to make a gentle recovery with training sessions entrusted to the player’s brother-in-law, a Basque lower-league coach. Mundo Deportivo reported that the club’s medical staff were keen to give the player space and had advised him against giving any interviews: “Confronting the experience suffered in the Corona de Aragón where he nearly met his death could badly set back his recovery.” Although they had little to fear on that front as the player was not given to discussing the incident: “Badiola has refused to recall what happened that day as his subconscious attempts to forget it.” 


While his teammate recovered slowly, Valdano quickly established himself as a mainstay in the team. Indeed, he was an ever-present in that first season at Zaragoza and would rarely miss a game in his five seasons at the club.  When Badiola finally arrived in Zaragoza, he moved in with Valdano hoping a familiar face would help him acclimatise to life in the city and football in Primera. Valdano, though, could see something was not right with his friend. Badiola failed to make an appearance in that first season and began behaving erratically. 

The Badiola that Valdano knew from Vitoria was quiet and reserved. The Badiola that had –– on the surface at least –– recovered from the injuries suffered in the hotel fire displayed profound mood swings and rather bizarre behaviour. Scenes such as getting totally naked when feeling a bit hot were commonplace. On occasions, Badiola would finish training and hail a taxi, asking to be taken the 300km to Ondarroa.  

His relationship with Zarraga’s daughter soon broke off, and Badiola’s parents moved to Zaragoza to support him. But over the course of three seasons, he made only handful of substitute appearances and never started a game for the club.

By the time Valdano had moved on to Real Madrid, rapidly accumulating silverware alongside the Quinta del Buitre, Badiola had already returned to Alavés in one last attempt to revive his career.

It was all to no avail, and while his friend was tasting footballing nirvana with Argentina on the biggest stage of all — playing in every game and scoring in the final of Mexico ’86 — Badiola was back in his native Vizcaya, living in total obscurity with his physical and mental health continuing to decline.

Franco’s family escaped the fire relatively unscathed.  His widow received brief treatment for smoke inhalation before the family were whisked back to Madrid. But the list of dead and injured was littered with military, police, and establishment names.  The unique profile of the guest list that night, at a time during Spain’s transition to democracy when ETA was at its most deadly, meant that suspicion naturally fell on the Basque separatist group.  

Soon after the blaze, a local newspaper, the Heraldo de Aragón, received a call purportedly from ETA claiming responsibility, though crank calls were a common occurrence in the wake of major incidents. The same paper received another claiming to be the inoperative left-wing organisation FRAP shortly after.

At command level, ETA did not acknowledge responsibility, as was its normal course of action after attacks. After completing their investigations, both local and national authorities declared the fire a tragic accident.  

Still, several newspapers and media outlets questioned the verdict, and victims’ families initiated proceedings to reclassify the incident as a terrorist act. The decades following the fire brought process after process, report after report.  Claims of separate explosions or the apparent discovery of traces of napalm among the cinders of the hotel regularly featured in articles, documentaries, and witness testimony. 

While no action has ever been able to change the official classification, several processes went some way towards assuaging if not satisfying those who believe it was a deliberate act.

In 2000, José María Aznar’s government concluded that the victims’ families were eligible to receive compensation available to those who had suffered acts of terrorism, although without officially recognising that the fire as a terror attack. 

In 2009, Supreme Court judges agreed with the theory put forward by an expert that the fire was the work of at least three individuals who had coordinated three different detonations before making their escape.  Although the court’s jurisdiction in that ruling only went as far as to grant one of the deceased the posthumous award of the Royal Cross of Civil Recognition given to victims of terrorism.  Two years later, a Council of Ministers decreed that the same recognition be given to the rest of those who lost their lives in the fire. 

The Guardia Civil went one step further, updating their records to classify the death of retired lieutenant Angel Cabello Iruela, who perished in the fire, as a victim of ETA.

For all its appalling record, ETA expressly denies culpability for what occurred that July morning.  In 2018, the group’s internal bulletin, Zutabe, recognised 758 killings and 2,606 ‘acts’. The report expressed a note of regret over the most shocking and bloody of its attacks — the 1987 bombing of a Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona — but categorically denied: “the authorship of false attacks such as the fire at the Hotel Corona de Aragón.”  

Understandably, the fire and the circumstances around it continue in the public consciousness. News features, documentaries and commemorative events maintain its place in the news cycle, alongside calls for the investigation to be reopened.

While Valdano became part of Spanish football’s intelligentsia, equally at home in a dressing room, boardroom or TV studio, his old teammate disappeared into anonymity. Although they kept in touch — in a way.

“He’s never had a phone. So, I’ve always had to keep up with him through third parties,” Valdano told journalist Miguel Mena, who took to the trail of finding Badiola for a contribution to Cuentos a Patadas — a book commemorating Real Zaragoza’s 75th anniversary. 

Valdano spoke of the night, in his time as manager of Real Madrid, he heard a commotion in the corridor of the team hotel on the eve of a match in Bilbao. On opening the door, Valdano saw Badiola embroiled in an argument with security personnel. Badiola had popped in to see his old friend, with no notion of phoning ahead nor explaining himself to staff guarding the floor.

“When we saw each other, he was still a bit wound up, but I gave him a hug and he calmed down. I could see he was a little lost and not really with it. It was upsetting, but I consoled myself with the notion that at least he still followed football and could make a decision like coming to visit me when I was in town.”

Valdano remains convinced that the injuries and the experiences of the hotel fire had destroyed the career of a teammate he had always considered as more talented than himself.  

“He was a good guy and a great player. A unique player. I saw him do things that I’ve never seen anyone do. The way he could beat an opponent, the way he passed a ball. Badiola was special. He had a great future. But it was obvious that the fire left an irreversible impact.”  

In the coastal village Ondarroa, Mena caught up with Badiola’s mother, Manuela. Heartbreakingly, she described her son’s decline, never the same after the tragic morning in 1979. 

Badiola was a compulsive eater, drinker, and smoker — overweight and with soaringly high cholesterol levels. A world away from the lithe 23-year-old with the world at his feet that had toasted his future hours before waking up to a hellish inferno. When he wasn’t hospitalised for treatment for his conditions, he passed his days at a day centre where he would rarely converse and seldom go out for fresh air.  

His recently widowed mother had to pay for his upkeep, struggling to stretch her pension to cover the costs. The compensation promised by the government had been bogged down in red tape, and she had all but given up on receiving anything.

“I don’t know if it was the smoke, or it was the blow to the head or something else. But that day, my son became lost for the rest of his life.”

By his own admission, Valdano was a little too full of youthful brio to dwell on the fact that he’d escaped one of the deadliest disasters in modern Spanish history by dint of a minor contract disagreement. But an experience as a somewhat more sagacious 50-year-old made him appreciate his good fortune a great deal more.

One leg of a charity trip to Mexico in March 2006 involved a helicopter flight from the capital to Toluca. Four of the six passenger seats were already occupied as Valdano and a polite young Mexican man climbed aboard.  The younger man allowed Valdano the first choice of the two remaining seats and he opted for the one in the centre.  

Taking off from the roof of a 15-storey building, the overloaded helicopter immediately lost height in the thin Mexico City air. The machine crashed to the ground on the residential street below.

Valdano came round in a local hospital with several broken ribs and a collapsed lung, but remarkably no lasting damage.  Juan Manuel Agudo Mille — the courteous fellow passenger who had taken the window seat — felt the full impact of the crash and died of his injuries.

Valdano, one of Spanish football’s most cerebral figures, has a particular deftness when it comes to finding the words to capture almost every scenario. 

He may have been thinking of himself, his old friend Badiola or them both when he once opined: “Life’s story is not just made up of the things that happened, but also of all the things that didn’t.”

From Oviedo to the Oscars, the World Cup to the Wild West: the remarkable life and times of Florencio Amarilla

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment

In a saloon bar on the edge of the desert, a man strides in, tosses his dusty Stetson on the counter and orders a beer to slake his high noon thirst. As he lowers his formidable frame on to a bar stool, the usual thing is on his mind — Native Americans. It was his job to track them down, but lately they’d become particularly elusive.

Thirst quenched, he signals for a refill. One to sip, rather than gulp. His brow cools and his body uncoils, and he begins to take in his surroundings, casting a glance around the scattering of fellow patrons. It’s a workaday crowd, but his gaze falls on an athletic figure on the far side of the room. As he drains his glass, he considers the man, his build and his features, figuring that maybe he’s just what they are looking for. In any case, there wasn’t time to be exacting. They needed someone, and he looked as close to it as he’d seen for a while.

Ordering two more beers, he draws himself up off his stool and strides purposefully across the room. Placing one glass down in front of the man, he takes the seat opposite and comes straight out with it.

“Hey buddy, how would you like to be in a movie?”

Twenty-four hours later, the pair are at work in the Tabernas Desert. For Antonio Tarruella, a budding actor-come-director, it’s just another day’s grind in the sweltering heat. For his new recruit, Florencio Amarilla, it is a thrilling breath of fresh air. Yesterday he was a retired footballer, contemplating his future. Today he’s an indigenous Yaqui, enlisted by Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds to a militia hell-bent on settling an old vendetta. 

The film’s other megastar —  the obligatory irascible sheriff — is also a former elite sportsman. Jim Brown had carried a ball further than anyone in the history of American football, yet here he was in the south of Spain, reinventing himself as an actor. 

Amarilla could see the parallels. And could sense the opportunity.  Almería had become the global headquarters of Western film making, with film companies sweeping into the region to rattle through productions. An unlikely boom that meant extras, stand-ins and bit-part actors were in demand. Even more so if they had what, by the loose standards of the time, passed as a Native American appearance.

Of indigenous heritage and brawny of build, Amarilla was a casting director’s dream and 100 Rifles became the first of over 100 film credits. A winger that once fired his country to a World Cup finals was now on the way to becoming the first Paraguayan to win an Oscar.  

With cactus-pocked deserts, canyons and ravines, Almería, tucked away in the southeast corner of Spain, offers a more than passable impression of an Arizona, a Texas or a Montana. Over 3,000 hours of annual sunshine and scarce rain provide a stunning natural light and a reliable shooting schedule. Crucially, in the 1960s, it was a far cheaper place to make a film than the country it was imitating, which made it the ideal location for a growing subgenre.

An enterprising group of Italian film directors had begun reimagining the classic American Western, a genre that had faded from its glorious past.  Given a grittier spin with sparse dialogues, intense close-ups and driven along by dramatic scores, the ‘Spaghetti Western’ exploded with the extraordinary success of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, made on a miserly budget in the province of Almería in 1964.  A copyright snag and a wariness of the American public’s reaction to this interpretation of the cherished Western meant they did not release the film in America until three years after its final cut. Even then, with European names substituted for American-sounding alternatives, with Leone credited as ‘Bob Robertson’ and the legendary composer Ennio Morricone listed as ‘Dan Savio’.

The delay had the unintended benefit of allowing the sequels For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to be released in quick succession in America, capitalising on the unexpected success of the original and catapulting the film’s main star, Clint Eastwood, to superstardom.

The triumph of the Dollars trilogy saw the production of Spaghetti Westerns multiply rapidly, with an impoverished corner of a country emerging from international isolation at the forefront. Accustomed to seeing its sons and daughters departing in the search of excitement, Almería began welcoming international film crews and the world’s biggest movie stars. Tarmac was hurriedly laid down for trailers to roll and planes to land upon. The Gran Hotel Almería sprang up on the city’s seafront to provide luxury accommodation and poolside cocktails for the likes of Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, and Alain Delon.

Locals adapted quickly, with many picking up second jobs that paid in one day on location what they usually earned in a week. Farm-hands with horse skills were prized and carpenters could name their price. An entire generation of Andalusian ‘cowboys’ was born: skilled stunt actors able to be thrown into a bar fight or flung from a horse at a moment’s notice.

Also in demand was anyone who could perform the role of a Native American. With production at full tilt and cultural sensitivities an afterthought, the bar for what qualified as an indigenous American was set particularly low. A swarthy complexion was enough for a local to be dispatched to the costume trailer, emerging in an implausible confusion of Sioux and Apache dress. 

A face that comprised native features could go a long way. And that was what caught the eye of Tarruella when he happened upon Amarilla in a bar in Almería. Like many Paraguayans, he was of Guaraní heritage and a fluent Guaraní speaker. Though unrelated to any of the Native American languages, it was mysterious enough for directors to use for the few lines of dialogue the script demanded.  

Amarilla’s encounter with Tarruella came at a perfect time. At 32, his career was winding down a decade on from his starring role at the 1958 World Cup. His performance in Sweden had presented an opportunity for a new life in Europe, one that he seized with both hands. Here was another life-changing moment. He would not let this one go either.

Amarilla was born in 1935 in Coronel Bogado, a small town in southern Paraguay. Little is known about his childhood, but it is believed he never met his mother and spent much of his early life in Argentina, before returning across the border as a gifted teenage footballer. His talent took him to the capital where he signed for Club Nacional and his explosive left foot and performances on the wing soon led to an international call-up.  

The player’s profile rocketed in 1957 when he scored a hat trick in a 5-0 demolition of Uruguay in a decisive World Cup qualifier. At the finals in Sweden the following summer, Amarilla impressed again, scoring twice against a high-powered France side that included Just Fontaine and Raymond Kopa. Paraguay narrowly missed out on qualification from their group, but several of the squad, including all five goalscorers, earned contracts with Spanish first division clubs. Along with centre-forward Jorge Romero, Amarilla joined Real Oviedo who provided him an early test of his acting skills. With overseas squad places at a premium, their new winger was required to invent a Spanish mother in order to accommodate Oviedo’s growing South American cohort.

After three respectable seasons on the north coast, an Achilles injury saw Amarilla end his contract and head east to Elche. He found life on the Mediterranean to his liking, playing for several clubs along the coast as he descended the divisions, finishing his professional career with Club Deportivo Almería. The financially troubled club disappeared in 1968, but Amarilla stayed around and made the city his home. 

With the production of Spaghetti Westerns ramping up rapidly in the region, the timing couldn’t have been better. After that chance encounter with Tarruella, Amarilla instantly transitioned to an unlikely new career.  His physical gifts, charisma and some equestrian skills picked up in his youth meant he was rarely out of work and soon racking up credits on increasingly high-profile projects.

A diversion from the constant stream of Westerns came with the 1970 war drama Patton, a biography of the American General George S. Patton. The film swept the following year’s Academy Awards, taking seven prizes, including Best Picture giving Amarilla claim to be the first ever Paraguayan Oscar winner.

The same year saw Amarilla reunited with Brown and joined on the main cast by Lee Van Cleef in El Condor. Supporting roles alongside Brynner, Bronson and Leonard Nimoy followed.

Amarilla was well-liked, striking up lasting friendships with an array of household names who found his backstory intriguing. In down times on set, it was not unusual to see Amarilla juggling a football in full war dress or explaining the finer details of the game to bewildered transatlantic colleagues. The midweek schedule also allowed him to keep playing, turning out for a number of regional league sides in the latter years of his thirties.

Inevitably, the dilution of quality and changing public tastes saw the revival of the Western ebb away once more. Though Amarilla remained adaptable to a new generation of filmmaking, even featuring in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s breakthrough Conan The Barbarian in 1982.  

While Almería remained a viable location, the gold rush had well and truly subsided by the 1980s, leaving the province and Amarilla to reinvent themselves once more.

Photos of Leone, Bronson, Eastwood and Brynner still hang on the walls of the Gran Hotel Almería. The hotel exudes a faded grandeur, the rooms more functional than fabulous these days.

Out in the desert, some of the abandoned cowboy towns have been immaculately converted into tourist attractions by shrewd locals who snapped up the disused sets before eventually selling them on to hotel groups. For a fistful of euros, film buffs can watch pistols being drawn at noon at Oasys MiniHollywood or head further up the road and explore Fort Bravo on horseback for a few euros more. The Almería Western Film Festival held each October draws thousands of visitors, packing out the city and both resorts.

Amarilla was not among the lucky few who capitalised on the legacy of the Spaghetti Western, instead as his acting career faded, he returned to football coaching at amateur level while selling shoes and books to make ends meet. Into his seventies, he was working as a kitman for Tercera side CD Comarca de Níjar. Unusually, he had made the stadium his home, despite offers of alternative accommodation by the club. “I like to live free. I get up early, walk, run, drink a mate. I’m happy like that. Then for the rest of the day, I’m sorting out the equipment, completely at the team’s disposal.” Amarilla was a popular figure, the club president remarking that he’d never seen anyone receive so many Christmas gifts.

There were occasional trips to Oviedo, where the directors still invited Amarilla for a game and paid for his flights and accommodation. 

In August 2012, some 44 years after that meeting in a bar, Amarilla died in the village of Vélez Rubio at the age of 77. His final scenes played out in the province he’d made his home, from its football fields to its deserts and canyons, during a most remarkable life.

Row 0, Seat 0: When Spanish football came together for the player who slept

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment

Dear Friend,

You won’t be able to read this letter. For the past three years, you haven’t been able to read anything. For the past three years, you have had a son you haven’t even been able to get to know.

Unless God works some miracle —you will never read these things, kiss your son, watch the swallows at sunset, or feel the rain on your face on an afternoon of football.

I have to confess to having a lump in my throat, and I would give anything to have not begun to write this. I have to admit that my longing for life is so overwhelming that thinking of you pains me greatly. 

I know that you’re not a unique case. In fact, in Madrid, another guy has spent over a year in a hospital, neither dead nor alive. But you are famous; he is unknown. You have a selfless wife who never leaves your bedside; he has only his mother. In reality, I’m writing to you both, but I address it to you as your name that has been the catalyst for a wave of compassion and camaraderie. Last night, when I watched your son on television kicking the ball to start the game, I had to use all my strength to choke back the tears.

God bless those who still feel the urge for charity. But for me, this noble game was less an effort to raise funds but more an expression of your name, youth, and the sporting world’s solidarity. You were a footballer, and it was in your work that you suffered the injury that has left you in a hospital bed these three years. So many have made an effort to be by your side. If the human will cannot give you back your smile, health, and movement, then at least it has given us a glimpse of an affection that will never be forgotten.

Tomàs Salvador 
La Vanguardia, 20th June 1967

Tall, powerful and topped with a distinctive burst of thick red hair, Miguel Martínez stood out on the football fields of Barcelona, not just for his striking appearance but also for his assured defensive abilities. Comfortable in defence or midfield, or often simply detailed to mark the opposition’s most talented player, Martínez progressed steadily from youth to the semi-professional ranks of Catalan football. From third-tier football with Granollers, he moved up to the second division with Sabadell before signing for CD Condal — a club affiliated to FC Barcelona.

A call-up for military service in the summer of 1961 threatened to stymie that progress, with Martínez sent to serve in the marine corps in Cadíz. But, far from a hindrance, Martínez’s time in Andalusia proved life-changing. A loan spell with local side San Fernando allowed him to continue playing in Segunda and brought him into the orbit of first-division Real Betis, whose scouts urged the club to sign a player they felt would be in demand. 

It was also in San Fernando that Martínez met his wife, Josefina, the daughter of the town’s leading furniture company, Muebles Marquez.

Martínez took to life in Primera with ease and joined a talented group of players at Betis. The club was reinvigorated after finally reemerging from a spell in Segunda and had finally found the means and self-confidence to purchase their own stadium.

Martínez on the front cover of Real Betis magazine Verde y Blanco, 1962

Early in Martínez’s second season at the club, Betis travelled to Real Madrid as league leaders, where Martínez was tasked with shutting down Ferenc Puskás. While the Madrid public were not impressed by Betis’ obdurate approach to the game, Martínez’s role in helping Betis grind out a share of the points drew plaudits from the press.

Betis eventually finished third, and their efforts were noticed by the incoming Atlético Madrid president, Vicente Calderón, who was attempting to rescue a season which had seen his club slump to seventh place. Calderón brokered a deal to sign three Betis players in time for the cup, which was then played as an epilogue to the league season.

The transfer included Martínez, the full-back Colo, and the attacking midfielder Luis Aragonés. All three immediately contributed as Atlético reached the final of the cup, where they were defeated by Real Zaragoza.

In the longer term, Aragonés would go on to become one the most influential figures in the history of Atlético Madrid, playing for a decade before retiring to take over as manager. Colo gave five seasons of exemplary service in defence, helping Atlético win a first league title in 15 years and talented enough to be occasionally called up for the Spanish national team. 

But while his teammates were gaining international caps and accumulating silverware, Martínez’s four cup appearances would tragically prove to be his last. 

For Atlético Madrid, the summer of 1964 followed the typical pattern of a high-profile Spanish club. After a few weeks of rest, the team embarked on a tour of South America. Such tours were an escape from the relentless heat of the Spanish summer but, more importantly, a lucrative source of funds.

Atlético’s tour was an ambitious one, a month-long and taking in six different countries. They began in Buenos Aires with a 1-0 defeat to Racing Club before the squad crossed the Río de la Plata to Montevideo, where a superb Peñarol side beat them by the same scoreline in front of a crowd of 60,000 in the Estadio Centenario.

Back at the team’s Columbia Palace hotel, the players dined together before going their separate ways for the evening. While some headed out to sample the local nightlife, others retired to the lounge to play cards. As a core member of the card school, Martínez was in the latter group, but after just a few hands, he left the game, telling his companions that he felt unwell and thought it best to get an early night.

A few hours later, when Colo returned to the room the two ex-Betis teammates shared, he found Martínez unconscious, unresponsive and with an alarmingly grey complexion. Colo immediately raised the alarm and scrambled to wake the club doctor. Martínez was rushed by ambulance to the Hospital Británico, where neurologists diagnosed a meningoencephalitis that had caused Martínez to fall into a coma.

A stunned Calderón relayed the news to Martínez’s family in Barcelona and his wife in Cádiz, arranging for them to be brought to Madrid to await the next flight to Montevideo.

That a strapping and apparently healthy 23-year-old could fall so suddenly and gravely ill mystified doctors and club staff. Calderón reported the player to have been in good health, noting that Martínez had been fearful of the long flight across the Atlantic but in good spirits and enjoying his first week in South America.

Discussion eventually centred around two incidents that occurred during Martínez’s time at Betis.

The first happened during Martínez’s Betis debut against Barcelona two years previously. The player had taken a heavy blow to the head early in the game and had reportedly passed out at half-time. Despite not being able to complete the game, Martínez dutifully took his place in the starting line-up the following week.

A more serious episode took place during a pre-season tour of Galicia a year later. Martínez again suffered a blow to the head, which this time led to a seizure. Club doctors referred Martínez to a neurologist who advised Martínez that he shouldn’t play until further tests had taken place. But a second opinion was sought, which allowed Martínez returned to the team after missing just a handful of games, bypassing the diagnostics altogether.

The latter case drew speculation of possible legal action between the two clubs and forced Betis president Benito Villamarín onto the defensive, insisting his club had done everything in the best interests of the player’s health. In the absence of clear legislation, Calderón decided against a protracted legal route, instead continuing to support the player at the club’s expense.

After a brief hiatus, Atlético’s tour continued with the squad travelling through Paraguay, Bolivia, Ecuador then Venezuela, receiving daily updates on their stricken teammate. At first, the team were buoyed by reports of an improvement, but that hope proved short-lived. At the beginning of August, after three weeks in a coma and with no prospect of surgical intervention, the decision was made to bring Martínez back to Spain.

Flying Martínez home was a complex operation, one which required collaboration between Atlético, the Spanish Embassy in Montevideo, health services on both sides of the Atlantic and even the national air carrier, Iberia — who provided an aeroplane. Martínez, along with his family and entire Uruguayan medical staff, was flown to Barajas airport in Madrid, where he was met by an ambulance and taken across the city to the Clínica de la Concepción.

On the tarmac, Calderón pledged the club’s ongoing support to the player and his family: “We have done, and will continue to do, everything necessary to help save his life. We will not spare any effort nor put any limit on our help.” Calderón’s quotes were carried in the following day’s newspapers along with the affecting images of the inert Martínez being carried from the aeroplane on a stretcher.

Martínez’s care was passed to the distinguished neurosurgeon, Doctor Sixto Obrador, who told reporters that he agreed with the prognosis of his Uruguayan colleagues. “I’m pessimistic. There’s no case for surgery — if there was, we would do it immediately. For now, the only thing we can do is think in the long term and place our hopes in the patient’s youth.”

Martínez’s case gradually faded from the public’s consciousness as the news cycle moved on. Weeks became months, months became years as time passed silently in room 466 of the Clínica de la Concepción. Martínez’s young wife devotedly continued her bedside vigil while her parents raised the couple’s young son.

“If one day — God willing –– science achieves the miracle of waking Miguel Martínez, the Atlético Madrid player would hardly know who this boy is climbing up to kiss him.” 

A picture of Miguelín Martínez clambering up on a hospital bed to plant a gentle kiss on his father’s head took up most of page ten in ABC on the morning of the 14th of June 1967. After three years, the story of the player who slept was back in the news.

“The time has arrived for the fans to demonstrate their support for Miguel Martínez. Tonight his Atlético teammates will play ‘The Rest of Spain’ –– a team containing a host of stars. Young Miguelín will wear the Atletico colours as he kicks off the match played in homage to his father.”

With Martínez’s Atlético contract expiring and no prospect of any improvement in the player’s condition, Calderón had decided a new effort was needed to be made to pay the ongoing medical bills and support the player’s family in the longer term. He enlisted the help of the influential Catalan journalist Morera Falcó, and the pair arranged for a Spanish national selection to play Atlético at their brand new home on the Rio Manzanares. 

It was a type of game that was a relatively common way of rewarding a long-serving player. But given the circumstances, this particular match was sure to draw much wider attention than a regular benefit game. Falcó was keen to capitalise on that goodwill and developed an ingenious concept. As well as the usual match tickets, a special category allowed anyone in Spain to pay for a symbolic ticket that gave no actual entry to the ground. These were printed as ‘Row 0, Seat 0’ and were distributed through the regional federations.

Poster advertising tickets for the benefit match

The idea caught on. One organiser reported receiving an envelope from two young brothers containing the correct 100 peseta fee. Alongside it was a note asking for the ticket not to be sent in case their parents found out how they had spent their pocket money.

Calderón and Falcó’s persuasiveness extended to institutional level too. RTVE, the national broadcaster, paid a sizeable fee to show the game live, while the Spanish Football Federation and the player’s union also made donations.

The ceremony on the evening of the game began with a visit to Martínez’s hospital room. Juan Antonio Samaranch, the government’s delegate for sport, awarded the player the Silver Medal of Sporting Achievement, which was pinned to his bedsheet alongside medals from Atlético and Betis.

Four kilometres further south, at the Estadio Manzanares, the two captains, Spain’s Paco Gento and Atlético’s Enrique Collar, emerged onto the field holding hands with Martínez’s son who was dressed in a miniature Atlético kit, his father’s number six printed on the back. 

After Miguelín took the honorary kick-off, the two captains laid flowers on a sideline seat set up to represent those that had donated by purchasing Row Zero tickets.

The game finished in a 2-0 win for the Spanish selection. But it became apparent early on that there were swathes of empty seats, and the attendance, when announced, was barely 10,000 — a fact that infuriated Falcó.

“I have a reputation in Barcelona for being firm but fair. Here I have to be the same. Frankly, I’m disappointed and feel totally let down by the Madrid public from whom we expected much better. Especially in a case of this nature. Rather than come along and lend their support, fans in Madrid have chosen to stay at home and watch TV.”

An exasperated Falcó pointed out that the two million pesetas raised from the gate receipts, broadcasting rights and other donations would only support Martínez and his family for a couple of years.

It took Falcó a few days to calm down, but when he did, he received some somewhat more positive news. When the returns from the regional federations had been collated, they showed that an astonishing figure of 31,000 Row Zero tickets had been sold across the country. 

What Falcó had devised as a way of supplementing the main gate receipts had, in fact, outstripped them by a factor of three to one. The donations from fans with no intention of attending the game pushed the grand total to over five million pesetas: a figure in line with – if not surpassing – what Falcó and Calderón had envisaged.

Once again, the case of Miguel Martínez made the newspaper headlines and led the newsreels, then once again, attention drifted elsewhere. His wife, Josefina, remained at his bedside — always with the same line for whoever asked. “One day, he’ll wake up, and he’ll look straight at me and say: ‘Wow, what a sleepyhead I am!’”

Josefina’s vigil continued for another five years until, at 6.30am on Wednesday, the 28th of September 1972, Martínez passed away at the age of 33. The cause of death was recorded as kidney failure, unrelated to the condition that had kept him in a coma for over eight years.

When news reached Atlético, that morning’s training session was cancelled. Players, coaches and board members made their way to room 466 of the Clínica de la Concepción, where they paid their last respects to their teammates and condolences to his family. That Sunday, Atlético took to the field at home to Espanyol wearing black armbands as a mark of respect.

Two days later, Martínez was laid to rest in the Cementerio de la Almudena, the main cemetery of Madrid. The city where he’d been for nearly a decade but hardly knew.

Josefina continued to fight her husband’s cause, bringing two cases to court in an attempt to have the death classified as a work accident, something that would title her and her son to draw down a pension. Her testimony highlighted the two head injuries Martínez suffered while playing for Betis, but the judge ruled against her on both occasions.  

For the son Martínez barely got to know, that night in 1967 would not be the only time he took to a football field in homage to his father. In the early 1980s, Miguelín followed in his father’s footsteps playing two seasons in defence for San Fernando — a touching echo of one of the happiest years of Miguel Martínez’s short life.

From World Series to the waste bin: The extraordinary rise and fall of Leganés president Jeff Luhnow

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Jeff Luhnow, CD Leganes’ new president Sipa US/Alamy Live News

The baseball men sat there, silently seething.

In front of them stood a man in his early sixties with thinning, grey hair with a sketch pad in hand. Behind him on a screen with the lecture title: “Classic Mechanics: A Throwing Model Based on the Construction of the Motions of Great Historic Pitchers.”

The man flicked through his illustrations of some of the great pitchers of baseball past in a vain attempt to convince the baseball men that the mechanics of modern-day pitchers could be fine-tuned for efficiency and, crucially, to avoid injury.

The baseball men sat disinterested and unmoved, bulging arms folded. They’d been in baseball for years, and they weren’t about to start taking lessons in pitching from a cartoonist.

Eventually, the talk reticently drew to its conclusion, and the baseball men filed wordlessly out of the room. Resentment for this most recent waste of time was reserved not for the kindly baseball illustrator but for the man who seemed to have a never-ending list of crackpot ideas. The bespectacled business school graduate who apparently thought he could waltz into one of the sport’s blue-blooded organisations and tell everyone there were better ways of doing it.

But time would prove Jeff Luhnow right. Though his communication was undoubtedly clumsy, many of his ideas proved to be innovative and were adopted by the St Louis Cardinals. Soon, he was put in charge of the Cardinals’ player recruitment and was responsible for a series of drafts which proved to be the most successful in the league.

As the Cardinals and his astute player selections won titles, Luhnow moved on –– to the worst team in the league. The new owner of the Houston Astros had given Luhnow the chance to run an entire baseball operation precisely the way he liked. Powered by Luhnow’s analytical decision-making, the Astros rose from unwatchable laughing stock to the best team in baseball.

But then Luhnow’s world came crashing down as the Astros were engulfed in the biggest cheating scandal in modern-day baseball. Luhnow would pay the price — suspended by Major League Baseball, then sacked on the very same day by the ownership that had once placed complete trust in him.

Left on the outside of baseball once more, Luhnow has since resurfaced in the most unlikely of places — in the southern Madrid suburbs as the newly installed president of CD Leganés.

Jeff Luhnow was born in Mexico City in 1966 to American parents who had been dispatched south of the border by their employer, the advertising behemoth McCann Erickson. Brought up in a football-mad city, it proved a challenge to follow the family love of baseball, but Luhnow and his younger brother would spend hours pitching and hitting in the backyard and found some competitive action in the city’s Liga Azteca youth baseball divisions.

But it was trips to America that would really instil Luhnow’s love of baseball. Summer camps in Texas gave him regular opportunities to visit Houston’s space-age Astrodome. Then later, when Luhnow moved to California to complete his schooling, he would catch as many LA Dodgers games as possible.

By the time Luhnow completed his studies, gaining an MBA from Chicago’s Northwestern University, he had developed a deep knowledge of baseball. His many afternoons spent watching the city’s long-suffering Cubs at Wrigley Field inspired him to produce an academic paper on how to turn the team’s fortunes around.

Luhnow’s MBA naturally led him into the business world, where he joined the management consulting firm McKinsey and Co before setting up Archetype Solutions. One of Archetype’s early successes was producing a subtle intervention that provided customers of tailor-made clothing companies with better-fitting clothes. Archetype’s analysis found small but significant biases in customers’ self-reported measurements. An algorithm was introduced into the manufacturing process that subtly corrected the sizing, making customers happy and clothing companies relieved at not having to constantly process returns.

While Luhnow’s innovative use of data propelled him upwards in the business world, America’s favourite pastime remained just that to him. In fact, it didn’t even cross Luhnow’s mind that his skills would be helpful to a baseball team. Baseball remained a closed shop, with owners largely happy to let the baseball lifers do their thing.

But 2003 would prove to be a seminal year in baseball with the publication of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book detailed how the low-budget Oakland Athletics had punched above their weight by exploiting weaknesses in established baseball methods and thinking. Key to the Athletics’ success had been the hiring of a Harvard economics graduate named Paul DePodesta. DePodesta helped the organisation develop alternative metrics that identified players likely to be productive for the team but available on lower salaries due to their underperformance on traditional statistical measures or their lack of visual appeal to the scouting fraternity.

The immediate effects in baseball were twofold. Suddenly there were highly-educated baseball fans with years of experience in business who could now see a route into the game they loved. And now, club owners were scrambling to revamp recruitment and create entirely new analytics departments.

Jeff Luhnow epitomised those in the former category; the St Louis Cardinals’ owner Bill DeWitt Jr was very much in the latter. Through a mutual McKinsey connection, Luhnow was hired by the Cardinals as the vice-president of baseball development in September 2003.

Luhnow’s arrival inevitably caused friction in the organisation with those who had been happily doing it their way for years. But with the backing of the owner, Luhnow’s influence grew, and many of the ideas that had been met with hostility eventually became standard practice. Luhnow was an early proponent of extreme defensive shifts — moving fielders far away from their traditional positions — based on data analysis of the specific batter they were facing. Managers had been reluctant to adopt the strategy, but over time it became standard practice across the league.

Even Luhnow’s cartoonist, dismissed out of hand during his presentation, was vindicated. His ability to identify pitchers at greater risk of injury led to him becoming a pitching consultant for around a dozen teams in the MLB.

But it was consistent recruitment success that had marked Luhnow out and turned heads around the league. Luhnow had hired Sig Mejdal, a biomathematician who worked at NASA optimising astronauts’ sleep patterns, to help him with draft preparation. Mejdal and Luhnow’s analysis gave the Cardinals an edge in the early rounds and the ability to keep finding value even in the very late rounds of a draft.

That ability was particularly desirable to teams looking to rebuild. And there was no team in baseball in more need of reconstruction than the 2011 Houston Astros.

Despite being the worst team in baseball, the Astros were bought for $680m by the logistics and shipping magnate Jim Crane. Crane immediately contacted Luhnow with a view to him becoming the Astro’s new general manager. So enticed was Luhnow by the prospect of running a baseball team entirely by his own methods that he immediately sent Crane a 24-page dossier setting out his vision. When Luhnow met Crane, he asked him what limitations would there be on his management. Crane slid a piece of paper across the desk, completely blank on both sides.

The Astros began a new chapter, but Crane and Luhnow were smart enough to know that in the short-term, the Astros would get worse, not better. Building a winning squad through the draft would take years, and the emphasis on the future meant that anyone of value on the Astros roster would be sacrificed to accumulate future draft picks.

Luhnow had taken over a team that had lost 106 games. In 2012, his first season, the Astros lost 107. In 2013 they lost 111. By the beginning of the 2014 season, the Astros had become quite literally unwatchable, with one game registering a 0.0 Nielsen rating — a figure that meant the TV ratings provider couldn’t detect that anyone had tuned in to watch the game at all.

Still, Luhnow and Crane held their nerve, and 2014 was to provide some hints of a recovery and a famous magazine front cover that more than hinted at a brighter future for the Astros.

In that same early-season where fans could barely bring themselves to watch, a Sports Illustrated journalist named Ben Reiter embedded himself with the Astros. Wowed by Luhnow’s analytical processes and how the Astros had restructured, Reiter returned to the magazine to produce the article. His editors were so persuaded by the piece that the entire front page of the 30th June 2014 edition was dedicated to it, with the boldest of headlines — “Your 2017 World Series Champs: An Unprecedented Look At How a Franchise Is Going Beyond Moneyball To Build the Game’s Next Big Thing.”

The cover drew a fair amount of derision, and popular culture had long since decreed that appearing on the front page of Sports Illustrated was more of a curse than a blessing. But it was a prediction that would come true and, for all the analytics and data science behind it, in the most emotional of ways.

The intervening years had seen the Astros improve, but 2017 was proving to be the best yet. By the end of August, the city of Houston was abuzz as the Astros led their division, already almost guaranteed a play-off spot and with a real shot at a World Series win that October.

Then, disaster struck as Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas and Louisiana causing catastrophic flooding and damage on a par with that of Katrina in 2005. With much of Houston underwater, the Astros were forced to play home games on the road until the authorities deemed it safe enough to return to a city in desperate need of a morale boost.

Wearing patches on their shirts in support of the victims of the hurricane, the Astros blazed through the rest of the regular season and through the play-offs. In a decisive game seven, the Astros beat the LA Dodgers to win their first-ever World Series title. Just three years after three straight 100-loss seasons had made them the worst team in baseball, Luhnow’s rebuild had propelled them to the very pinnacle of the sport.

Luhnow’s work had laid the foundations for sustained success. The Astros reached World Series again in 2019; once more, the series went to a decisive game seven. This time it wasn’t to be, as the Washington Nationals prevailed, but the Astros were now consistent contenders, as Luhnow had envisaged all along.

But that game would prove to be Luhnow’s last in baseball.

“The Astros stole signs electronically in 2017.” 

The headline of the article in The Athletic on the 12th of November 2019 was as matter of fact as could be.

Sign-stealing — figuring out the signal that a catcher gives to his pitcher in order to provide the batter with knowledge of what type of pitch to expect next — was almost as old as baseball itself. Done organically, it was a legal and accepted practice – almost an art – that mainly came into play when a batting side had a runner on second base. From there, the runner had the perfect view of the opposing team’s catcher, and if he could decode the signals, he could let his own batter know if the next ball was likely to be a fastball or a slower changeup.

But sign-stealing by any other method was illegal and frowned upon, and using electronic equipment to convey information was explicitly prohibited by MLB rules. That did not stop rumours of the practice swirling around the league. 

The article in The Athletic outlined the scheme that the Astros had used in 2017. Their sources were four people who had been with the Astros in 2017, including pitcher Mike Fiers. The set-up was simple. At Astros home games, a camera was set up in centre-field that focussed exclusively on the catcher. Pictures were relayed to a TV screen positioned in the tunnel just behind the Astros dugout. Players and other employees would watch, and when they believed they knew what pitch was coming next, it was communicated to their man at-bat by loudly banging on the rubbish bin in the tunnel. No bang usually meant a fastball was coming; a bang meant the batter should expect a slower pitch.

The story caused a sensation — a very 21st-century sensation. Within hours of the story breaking, a video was posted on YouTube by an account called ‘Jomboy’ of a sequence of play detailed in the article. To date, the video has over 7 million views.

The incident featured Chicago White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar, who came in to pitch late in a game away to the Astros at the tail-end of the 2017 season. It was gone 10pm on a Thursday night, meaning most of the crowd had gone home, and the stadium was relatively quiet. When winding up to throw, Farquhar noticed a banging sound and felt that the batter he was facing had been unusually alert to what type of pitch was coming. When his catcher called for another changeup, Farquhar again heard the banging, broke off his motion, and went to talk with the catcher. The pair set a trap where a fastball would be signalled but a changeup thrown. Sure enough, the batter swung too early, and the slower delivery struck him out.

Farquhar was livid and let the Astros bench know what he thought. But no member of the press approached him to ask about it after the game, and his teammates put it down as pitcher paranoia. It took two years before reporters putting The Athletic article together finally called him to ask about that night.

The Astros were the perfect target for public opprobrium. Despite the emotional nature of their World Series win, the organisation had gained a reputation as one that would put positive baseball outcomes above all else. They had negotiated contracts in bad faith with some of their draft picks, and several former employees had complained about a toxic workplace culture.

Eyebrows were raised when the Astros signed pitcher Roberto Osuna at the end of a 75-game suspension for domestic violence. For businessmen like Crane and Luhnow, they were simply buying a distressed asset at a low price. Then the matter went to another level when Astros assistant general manager Brandon Taubman ranted bizarrely at three female reporters about the player. Taubman was eventually sacked but only after a series of typically tone-deaf responses by the Astros.

Reviewing tens of thousands of emails and text messages and interviewing 68 witnesses, Major League Baseball’s disciplinary enquiry was thorough. Its verdict, for Luhnow, was stunning. Despite the report stating that there was no evidence to suggest that Luhnow was aware of the scheme, he was suspended from baseball for a year for what had occurred on his watch.

The same day, Astros owner Crane went one step further, firing Luhnow along with the other man punished by the league, the team manager A.J. Hinch. “Neither one of them started this, but neither did anything about it,” read Crane’s statement.Confusingly, the report concluded that the sign-stealing scheme was “player-driven and player-executed”, yet a few paragraphs later stated that it would “not assess discipline against individual Astros players.” The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that the league had struck a deal with the players’ union that granted immunity to players who testified. 

For some, Luhnow was the fall guy, the man who paid the price for a player-driven scheme in a league that was terrified of punishing players. For others, Luhnow had made his own bed by creating an organisational culture that put the pursuit of a competitive edge beyond all else.

But as the din of the permanently indignant social media debate raged on, one cold hard fact remained — the man who had worked in the sport he loved and won three World Series rings was now a baseball outsider once more.

When Luhnow spoke to KPRC Houston in his first public interview after his sacking and suspension, it was clear he felt his future lay away from the diamond.

“The opportunity to apply business practices, analytics and technology exists in many sports. My skills aren’t stuck in baseball — they could easily be transferred to another sport. I’m considering all my options at this point.” Luhnow went on to mention European football as one area of consideration.

It was a process that saw Luhnow arrive on the southern outskirts of Madrid and the quirky satellite town of Leganés with its streets named after AC/DC and The Scorpions, spectacular sunsets, and a roundabout dedicated to a giant sculpture of the Loch Ness Monster.

The town is also home to CD Leganés, a popular and tidily run club in Spain’s second division, seeking promotion to the top flight they recently played in for four seasons before being relegated in unfortunate circumstances.

For the bilingual Luhnow, the club and the league provided the perfect fit for the Blue Crow Investment Group that he heads. “We believe the league has the most growth potential, with the financial controls and the recent deal with CVC. Leganés has the best combination of what we searched for: location, fans, stadium and growth potential.”

The 99% stake acquired in Leganés made the club the second football acquisition after the purchase of FC Cancún of Mexico’s second division.

Analytics will undoubtedly be a significant part of Leganés’ future. “We want to use technology to create advantages. We have people who have used technology in the Premier League and MLS. Leganés can certainly take advantage of that. We believe football is a little behind in that respect, but that is something that is going to change.”

The new president will be as focused as ever on the process but will hopefully take time to appreciate those incredible sunsets over the Estadio Municipal de Butarque. Preferably without the distraction of someone banging on a dustbin.

When the man who could organise anything nearly met his match: Raimundo Saporta and the 1982 World Cup

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment

FOTOTECA YOLANDA LAB:J LIZÓN

He was the man who could organise anything. The man on top of every little detail. That’s why they put him in charge of this.

He was the man who changed the course of Spanish football history by signing Alfredo Di Stéfano for Real Madrid from under the noses of Barcelona. The man who then helped add Paco Gento, Raymond Kopa, José Santamaría and Ferenc Puskás to the squad. 

He was the man who, not satisfied with creating the greatest Real Madrid side of all time, then helped launch the competition that later defined them — the European Cup.

He was the man that revolutionised basketball in Spain and then Europe, creating the Spanish League and then the European Cup. Then, of course, revitalised Real Madrid’s basketball team so successfully that they came to dominate both competitions. 

He was the man so implicitly trusted by Real Madrid president Santiago Bernabéu that he was eventually left to run the club almost by himself.

That’s why they’d given him this job, and he’d been only too happy to take it. After all, this was a man used to creating competitions from scratch — how hard could organising a football tournament be?

But here, just weeks before the tournament was due to start, Raimundo Saporta was feeling the strain. So overwhelming were the demands that the phone in his apartment seemed to ring non-stop, with the answering machine long since filled to capacity. 

Newspapers speculated upon his state of health, reporting regular stays in Switzerland where he undertook medical checks accompanied by his mother. El Pais noted behavioural changes in Saporta — “a man so usually discreet who has begun to make the front pages with strident statements and continuous mentions that his only boss is the King. Those close to him claim that he has been prescribed medication that relaxes him but sometimes gives him an unusual euphoria. Drowsiness at certain public events seems to confirm these symptoms.”

But Saporta persevered with the task, admitting to extreme fatigue but otherwise dismissive of what was being printed by the newspapers — “The press has been very difficult to deal with.”

There was, though, one thing they could all agree on: the 1982 World Cup was proving way more challenging to organise than anyone had anticipated.

It was in London in the summer of 1966 when FIFA confirmed their plans for three future tournaments. Spain stood aside for West Germany to host the 1974 edition, which meant they were automatically selected when the competition returned to European soil eight years later.

In the mid-1960s, the notion of hosting a World Cup seemed almost quaint. The cosy 16-team tournament lasted less than three weeks, was broadcast in sleepy black and white, and its 32 matches were mainly attended by curious locals.

By the time 1982 came around, the tournament was well on its way to becoming a modern-day global technicolour jamboree. FIFA had eagerly expanded the competition meaning Spain would host the biggest tournament yet — a 24-team, month-long extravaganza requiring more host cities and accommodating more fans than ever before.

If the World Cup had evolved in those intervening years, Spain had changed immeasurably. Franco’s death in 1975 led to a period of rapid but fragile transition. A new Spain aspired to become a modern democracy, but the process was complex and hindered by distrust between competing interests on either side of the political spectrum.

On the periphery of the process, political violence reached alarming levels. Terrorist atrocities and incidents formed a depressingly regular part of the news cycle. ETA, in particular, became more malevolent than ever, and their spectre hung heavily over the World Cup. Just weeks before the start of the tournament, the Basque separatist group attempted to wipe out the telecommunications of an entire city, blowing up the eight-storey headquarters of Telefónica in central Madrid, taking 20,000 lines and 700,000 telephones off the network in the capital.

An act during the tournament seemed almost inevitable, particularly when a Guardia Civil officer was murdered by ETA in Gipuzkoa on the day of the opening ceremony.

The political upheaval seemed to entirely distract from a troubling economic picture. An economy heavily reliant on foreign oil was reeling from successive oil shocks, sending prices spiralling upwards. Organisers now found themselves trying to organise a World Cup in an environment that saw inflation constantly in double digits.

Unemployment soon rocketed, leaving a fledgling government floundering, unable to take any meaningful action while budgetary deficits swelled to dangerous levels and foreign exchange reserves depleted rapidly.

Financing a World Cup became a nightmare. As well as the usual stadium and local infrastructure upgrades, there was the unwelcome discovery that Spain’s entire television network would have to be upgraded to broadcast the tournament at a cost of 17.5 billion pesetas (€105 million).

As if there was not enough to worry for organisers about, the outbreak of the Falklands War brought four of the qualified teams into conflict with each other. A 2014 release of United Kingdom government archives revealed anxious deliberations over whether to withdraw England, Scotland and Northern Ireland from a tournament that featured Argentina as holders and was hosted by a country where the public opinion was overwhelmingly against the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands, given Spain’s position on Gibraltar.

The government decided the three teams should travel to Spain as planned, but only after myriad discussions that included the bizarre highlight of Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine calculating the various permutations of the rather complex World Cup draw — “Scotland could play Argentina in the second round, but Northern Ireland and England can only meet them in the final,” he concluded.

That draw had been a shambles that did little to settle the host’s jitters. Taking place shortly after Christmas in Madrid’s Palacio de Congresos, the creative minds amongst the organising committee decided to theme the draw along the lines of Spain’s Christmas lottery, using both the distinctive golden cages used to draw the numbers and the purple-sashed pupils of the San Ildefonso school who famously sang the results.

The event quickly descended into farce, with the presiding FIFA delegates apparently forgetting their own fairly basic stipulations, drawing Belgium and then Scotland into the wrong groups. “Quite extraordinary,” exclaimed Barry Davies in typical fashion on the BBC’s coverage of the draw, “They went to great lengths to explain the procedure, but when it’s come to the draw, they’ve not adopted their own plans.”

Even after correcting the errors, the draw dragged on interminably. FIFA officials grew increasingly impatient with the amount of time it was taking the schoolchildren to extract the balls and deliver them to their table. Matters got even worse when the miniature two-piece Adidas Tango balls containing the teams’ names began to break apart inside the cages. This led to the unedifying spectacle of fingers being poked into the machinery in an attempt to get them moving.

When the draw finally ended, it was left to those on the organising committee to take the positives. “Spain have a good chance to qualify for the second round. After that, we’ll see. I think the tournament is guaranteed to be a financial success. On the field, we’ll have to see, but whatever the outcome, we’ll support the players,” was the upbeat verdict of the president of the Royal Organising Committee, Raimundo Saporta, who’d been appointed the most important job any Spanish football administrator had ever been given.  

Not a bad achievement for someone given their chance in football mainly because he knew precisely nothing at all about it.

Saporta’s journey to the heights of Spanish football was an unusual one. Indeed, there is mystery surrounding where it even began with his place of birth the subject of debate among Spain’s most eminent football historians. Most official documents stated Saporta was born in Paris in December of 1926, but a detailed investigation by the football history association, CIHEFE, concluded it was more likely he was actually born in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

What’s for sure is that Saporta was born to Sephardic Jewish parents who were both born in the Ottoman Empire. By the early 1940s, the family had long been settled in Paris, with Raimundo happily studying at the prestigious Lycée Carnot. But when German boots reached Parisian streets in the early part of the Second World War, the city became a precarious place for anyone even suspected of being Jewish, with families regularly taking measures to conceal their ethnicity. CIHEFE found evidence that Saporta’s school records had been edited to remove any reference to Constantinople, quite probably as part of the family’s attempts to avoid Nazi scrutiny.

Taking advantage of the Spanish citizenship they held — in 1924, Spain had made citizenship automatically available to Sephardic Jews — the family secured safe passage to a new life in Madrid. Tragically, soon after the family settled in the city, Raimundo’s father Jaime was struck fatally by a tram. 

Heartbroken, the family continued on in their alien surroundings, although they afforded themselves some familiarity by enrolling both sons in the Lycée Français de Madrid. The French school had a lively basketball scene that Saporta very much enjoyed. Realising his physical talents would never guarantee him a place on a squad, he began helping out in administrative roles and was soon named the team’s official delegate.

Saporta’s exceptional organisational talent soon turned heads at the Spanish Basketball Federation. The governing body’s president, Colonel Jesús Querejeta Pavón, was so taken by Saporta that he immediately sought to add him to the board but was frustrated by the Federation’s own rules, which stated directors must be at least 21 years old. Saporta continued to work in an unofficial role until being installed as vice-president upon reaching the required age in 1947.

Saporta set about improving and restructuring Spanish basketball and was held in such regard that when, in 1952, Santiago Bernabéu began looking for someone to organise a basketball tournament as part of Real Madrid’s 50th-anniversary celebrations, he received exactly the same answer from whoever he asked: Raimundo Saporta.

With minimal fuss, Saporta arranged an impressive four-team tournament, including international opposition in the form of Racing Club of Paris, the Puerto Rican national team and a talented team of Suffolk-based American serviceman named the Lakenheath Pirates. In the final, Real Madrid rallied from a huge deficit to beat an excellent Puerto Rican team, who ABC described as: “possibly the finest team to have ever played basketball in the city of Madrid.” 

Delighted by the tournament, Bernabéu immediately recruited Saporta to his board. Saporta pointed out that he knew absolutely nothing about football, “That’s good,” countered Bernabéu, “There are far too many around that think they do.”

Saporta’s creative problem-solving and attention to detail saw him implicitly trusted with some of the most important matters of the club. When Bernabéu observed the impasse in Barcelona’s attempt to sign Alfredo Di Stefano, it was Saporta he dispatched to Colombia to convince Millionarios that dealing with Madrid would be far simpler and more lucrative than talking to Barcelona.

Eventually, Real Madrid won the day. Even by the time Di Stefano made his Madrid debut, Saporta had been at the club barely a year.

Saporta became Bernabéu’s right-hand man, and the pair worked closely together for a quarter of a century, each complementing the other’s character. Where Bernabéu was authoritarian, impulsive and prone to fits of rage, Saporta was collegiate, assiduous and avuncular. 

Bernabéu had the grand visions, but it was Saporta who could get things done. That was something that L’Equipe came to learn when attempting to launch their idea of the European Cup. The newspaper had been frustrated in their attempts to get the project off the ground until someone suggested a phone call to Saporta might get things moving. Sure enough, the idea had become a reality within a few days as Saporta worked his magic.

Saporta took care of some of the tiniest details. As Justo Tejada, who won two league titles with both Barcelona and Real Madrid, remembered to Panenka magazine: “Barça will always be the club of my heart, but at Madrid, they looked after every little detail. You couldn’t even forget your wife’s birthday as a bouquet would show up for her with a card that said: ‘From the office of Raimundo Saporta’ ”.

Remarkably, Saporta combined the football club’s vice-presidency with the basketball operation’s presidency. There he helped create a basketball version of the European Cup and established the Spanish basketball league as one of Europe’s most successful. 

The tournament that started it all in 1952 even lived on, eventually morphing into the Torneo de Navidad, a four-team tournament that attracted top international teams and some of America’s most storied basketball colleges and became a staple of Spanish Christmas TV viewing for decades.

By the time of Santiago Bernabéu’s death in 1978, Real Madrid had won six European Cups in both football and basketball. Most assumed the vice-president who had done so much to deliver that success would replace Bernabéu, but the man himself had other ideas.

“Don Santiago always told me not to accept the presidency if he died. And that’s what I’m doing. Firstly, because of a lack of personal ambition, and secondly, because he told me I would suffer a lot in the role.” With that, he walked away from the club he’d worked at for some 26 years. 

But just months later, the Spanish Federation, shocked by the announcement by FIFA of an expanded World Cup, suddenly realised the committee they had assembled was not up to the task. There was only one person to call. Within days, Royal Decree number 2346/78 declared Raimundo Saporta as the president of the Real Comité Organizador de la Copa del Mundo, reporting directly to the King. It was as prestigious a title and role as could be, but one that really would make him suffer.

As Italy’s Dino Zoff held the World Cup aloft, just a few feet away in the stadium that bore his old boss’ name, Saporta could finally afford to let out a sigh of relief. It had been a success.

It had certainly not been easy, and the stresses on Saporta as the cornerstone of it all had been enormous. At one stage, a row with the host cities escalated to such an extent that Saporta offered his resignation, causing an almighty panic in the government, the Spanish Federation and FIFA and front-page headlines that Spain was on the verge of giving up the World Cup. His resignation was refused, and the cities were swiftly brought into line.

The off-the-field factors that Saporta had so feared miraculously subsided. ETA’s guns fell silent, and the Falklands War concluded early in the competition, with none of the teams crossing each other’s paths.

Financially, the tournament even technically reported a profit with the infrastructure debt either covered by lottery funding or creatively kicked down the road by accountants.

On the field, it would prove to be a World Cup that lived in the memory, serving up a combination of compelling football and skullduggery in equal measure in matches attended by over two million spectators. The only thing missing was a strong showing from the hosts, who were desperately disappointing and eliminated after winning just one of their five matches.

Saporta was widely commended for his work. In their review of the year, ABC called the World Cup the biggest success of 1982, lauding Saporta as the “mastermind behind the event.”

Saporta though, would publicly acknowledge the adverse effects that the World Cup had on his health — “It did me harm” — and a heart attack in 1987 took a further toll. He died in 1997, still involved in basketball, helping plan the European Cup’s revamp to the Euroliga.

At his funeral, the Real Madrid president, Lorenzo Sanz, lamented the loss of a man “only behind Santiago Bernabéu as the most important person in the history of Real Madrid.”

Remarkably, in the forty years since that 1982 World Cup and despite the country’s standing in world football, Spain has never since hosted a major tournament. Perhaps maybe, because they’ve never found anyone else quite like Raimundo Saporta.

Acknowledgements

Fernando Arrechea and Victor Martínez Patón’s superb investigation into the country of Saporta’s birth helped with this article

El Centenariazo: The night Super Depor gatecrashed the biggest birthday party of all time – and even stole their dinner reservation

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment
Goalscorers Sergio Gonzalez and Diego Tristán with Juan Carlos Valerón REUTERS/Sergio Perez PH/CRB

Preparations at Asador Donostiarra on Madrid’s Calle de la Infanta Mercedes were in full swing. The labyrinth of dining rooms buzzed as an army of waiters frantically buffed cutlery and polished glasses; sommeliers double checked there were enough bottles of cava on ice and enough reserva for later; while the chefs decided it was about time to light the charcoal under those famous grills. 

The restaurant had been selected to host the feast for the biggest birthday party the city had ever seen. It was well used to hosting the great and the good of Madrid, but this was going to be something special, something historic. They would need to clear some space on the walls for some more photos after this.

But then the phone rang.

The call was short. The manager who picked it up barely saying a word before slowly replacing the receiver. The news quickly filtered through the restaurant — “They’ve cancelled: it’s off,” — causing everyone to stop what they were doing. Staff stood about or slumped on chairs, waiting to be told what to do next. In the kitchen, they began silently putting the kilos of chuletón back in the fridge. 

Then, barely ten minutes later, the phone rang again. 

The conversation this time was disjointed — even farcical, as the Galician accent on the other end of the line struggled to make itself heard over the din behind until finally finding a quiet corner: “We heard they cancelled. Don’t worry — we’ll come instead. We’ll be there in an about an hour. Oh — and we’re thirsty!”

2002 was Real Madrid’s centenary year, and they had big plans to celebrate it. Florentino Pérez’s election as president in 2000 had revived the club’s finances and heralded the beginning of the Galáctico era. Reinvigorated, they began honouring their 100th year in a style befitting the most successful club in European football.

The razzmatazz began on the 6th January — El Día de Reyes — when the club’s basketball team hosted a Magic Johnson All-Star team. A largely knockabout event that saw Magic himself switching to play for Real Madrid midway through the game.

A special theme park was set up in Madrid’s huge Casa de Campo park, with a mock-up of the Plaza de Cibeles — where Real Madrid traditionally go to celebrate trophy wins — greeting visitors as they arrived. Inside, patrons could visit an exact reproduction of the Real Madrid dressing room — where an empty jacuzzi displayed footage from the club’s history; ride bumper cars painted in club colours; try to navigate a hall of mirrors without bumping into images of legendary players; or try a virtual reality simulator which put the user in the novel role of a ball during a Real Madrid game. On opening night, candles on a birthday cake large enough to serve 4,000 portions were blown out.

The Spanish post office issued the almost obligatory set of commemorative centenary stamps, and the route of the 2002 Vuelta a España was drawn up to conclude with a final stage time trial with the finish line at the Santiago Bernabéu. The stadium would also play host to a match in December between Real Madrid and a FIFA Rest of the World XI, complete with Placido Domingo singing the club anthem to round off the year of celebrations. A rather lofty request that no other football games be played anywhere in the world that day went largely unobserved — much to the mirth of the Catalan sports press who gleefully published a full schedule of the day’s other fixtures on the morning of the game.

Despite the packed calendar, there was a spectacular list of events that Carat — the ‘global media and marketing agency’ entrusted with running the centenary festivities — couldn’t quite pull off. A mobile exhibition aboard a ‘Centenary Train’ stopping off at Spain’s major cities never quite got on track. A fashion show featuring the world’s top dozen supermodels parading Real Madrid inspired garb along a catwalk at Plaza de Cibeles and a head-to-head match play golf challenge between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia featuring a final hole in the Bernabéu both also failed to materialise. And the biggest moonshot of all — a plan to project the club’s crest onto the surface of the moon via the Hispasat satellite — proved to be exactly that and was eventually deemed logistically near impossible. 

If Tiger Woods, Naomi Campbell and the curvature of the earth had all proved impossible to negotiate with, the Spanish Federation proved a great deal more pliable when Madrid laid out their proposals for that season’s Copa del Rey.

The Copa del Rey Final was usually the last act of a Spanish season, often played long after the rest of European football had downed tools for the summer. The previous year’s final had taken place on the last day of June. But Madrid successfully lobbied the Federation to allow them to host the final while also bringing the entire tournament schedule forward so that the match would fall on the exact day of their 100th birthday on the 6th March 2002.

For a club that primarily identified itself with the European Cup, the domestic cup was not usually a priority. Indeed, in the previous eight seasons, they hadn’t managed to make it to a final. But the playing staff were soon fully aware that this season had to be different, and — despite scares in Tarragona and Bilbao — they duly delivered, reaching the final to set up a gala night.  

With everything in place, all that was needed was some opponents. At one point, the cup had looked like becoming a procession for Madrid with big guns tumbling out at in bizarre circumstances. A crisis-torn Barcelona were humbled by Segunda B’s UE Figueres, and then Rafa Benitez’s Valencia made the fatal error of illegally introducing a fourth non-EU player as a late substitute against Novelda and were kicked out of the competition. 

Madrid’s eventual opposition would be Deportivo La Coruña, who had an eventful time of it themselves. A row over the suitability of L’Hospitalet’s artificial pitch ended with the Federation ordering the game to be switched to Barcelona’s Mini Estadi and L’Hospitalet refusing to play, allowing Depor a walkover to the last eight. There they had to go to extra-time with Real Valladolid before only narrowly defeating Figueres in the semi-final.

Despite a less than convincing run to the final, Depor were a serious proposition. In a golden era of their own, Super Depor had followed up a famous league title win with a second-place finish and were going toe-to-toe with elite opposition in Europe as the continent woke up to the talents of a side that included the like of Djalminha, Mauro Silva and Juan Carlos Valerón. The talented and steely group of players were more than game for the challenge of ruining the biggest birthday party in world football. And their fans were pretty up for it too.

A queue snaked all the way from the Estadio Riazor to the city’s old town on the day that Deportivo’s allocation of 25,000 tickets went on sale. A Wednesday night kick-off and the prospect of a 14 hour round trip were not enough to quell the enthusiasm of supporters who were more than happy to buy into a narrative of ruining Real Madrid’s big night.  

Sticking it to the establishment was a prominent feature of the Galician psyche at the time. While Madrid and Barcelona boomed, Galicia had felt forgotten as the region’s traditional industries declined. A situation that was beautifully illustrated by the award-winning film Los lunes al sol highlighting the plight of Vigo’s shipbuilders and the debasing effects of unemployment.

The region’s reputation had been dealt a further blow by the dismantling and prosecution of the region’s prolific drug cartels, and jibes of ‘drug addicts’ or ‘drug dealers’ were commonly aimed at fans of the Galician clubs at away games.

As the huge convoy of coaches rolled out of A Coruña before dawn on the morning of the game, some fans jokingly likened it to feeling like an army on a special mission. Any self-respecting army needs a flag to rally around, and it just so happened that Depor fans had found pretty much the perfect one. As a response to the patriotic Spanish flag with a silhouette of a bull common at sporting events, designer and Depor fan Antón Lescano had come up with a tongue-in-cheek design that superimposed a giant Galician dairy cow onto the flag of Galicia. The result was a hit, chiming perfectly with the irreverent Galician sense of humour and becoming a symbol of the occasion with hundreds spotted around Madrid as the bars and plazas filled up with the masses from the northwest.

While the fans enjoyed themselves, the Depor players and staff focused squarely on the game, although some irritants were proving difficult to block out. During the press conference on the eve of the final, Depor head coach Javier Irureta did his best to remain polite when he was ludicrously asked if the squad had remembered to pack their nappies.  

Further incidents would ensure that Depor went into the game with more of a sense of irritation than fear. The restaurant where Depor had their pre-match meal was festooned with Real Madrid flags, and upon arrival at the stadium, it soon became evident that the allocation of tickets given to the Depor players’ families was in a far inferior part of the ground to that of their counterparts.  

Even a routine interaction between friends served to stoke Depor’s ire. As Real Madrid’s Flavio Conceição casually chatted with Mauro Silva and Djalminha before the game, he lamented to his fellow Brazilians that it was a shame they wouldn’t be able to meet up after the game — what with all the receptions and celebrations the Madrid players were expected to attend.

As kick-off drew closer, Real Madrid’s special programme of pre-match entertainment got underway, though it seemed the promoters had misjudged the crowd dynamics somewhat. Depor fans had already arrived to fill their sections while Madrid fans stuck to their usual pre-match routines, arriving just minutes before the game. The result was a succession of acts playing to a quarter full stadium — and to Depor fans more intent on piss-taking than earnest audience participation.

If the build-up had been interminable, Depor were in no mood for hanging around when the game finally got underway. They immediately forced the tempo, relentlessly attacking the goal behind which their fans were massed and flying into tackles whenever Madrid had the temerity to attempt possession.

Diego Tristán had already nearly opened the scoring before he combined smartly with Sergio González, sending his midfielder in behind the Madrid defence to finish neatly and send the Depor fans into scenes of absolute bedlam.  

The game was just five minutes old. And Depor continued to swarm forward.

A few minutes later, Madrid sought respite with a Roberto Carlos-led counter that arrived at the feet of Raúl, who was clattered in quick succession by Lionel Scaloni then Mauro Silva. A mass confrontation ensued in which Mauro Silva furiously sought out Raúl. While the Brazilian was held back, Jose Molina had charged from his goal to deliver a chilling warning to the Madrid forward. “I’ll punch you so hard that it’ll kill you. Touch my teammate again, and I will tear your head off.”   

That Raúl had done so little to merit such menace was testament to Depor’s emotionally-charged approach to the game, completely unwilling to give Madrid a moment to breathe.  

The onslaught continued, and by halftime, Depor had doubled their lead. Valerón found space behind a dishevelled Madrid backline and fed Tristán, who swept the ball home and celebrated wildly in front of the Depor fans, whipping off his shirt to display a vest with “Riazor Blues On Tour” emblazoned on the front.

That both goals had gone through the legs of goalkeeper César only served to heighten Real Madrid’s creeping neurosis. César had surprisingly been preferred to 20-year-old Iker Casillas, who had seemingly emerged as the club’s number one until that point. TV pictures now repeatedly cut to an increasingly distraught Casillas, who was also the perfect personification of Madrid’s distress as the night unravelled. The young goalkeeper was inconsolable by the end of the game.

The second half proved to be very different to the first. Raúl pulled a goal back just before the hour for Madrid, and Depor were forced to dig deep. Once again channelling the energy from their fans — this time positioned behind them as they defended for their lives.

When the final whistle eventually arrived, Scaloni picked up the ball and booted it high into the stands. The Depor players and staff gathered in front of their fans, an entire end bouncing.  

It was the only end still populated as Depor captain Fran had weaved his way up to the presidential palco, past Florentino Pérez, past Sepp Blatter and all the way to the king who presented him with the cup. 

Back down on the field, celebrations continued until Depor’s 25,000 supporters came to the collective realisation that they had totally forgotten their manners. Using the last of what voices they still had left, they serenaded their hosts with an ironic rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to You’ before spilling out of the stadium into the Madrid night. Some lucky fans cruising down the Paseo de la Castellana for free, courtesy of delighted Atlético Madrid supporting taxi drivers who refused to take their money. 

“I think you can say that the 6th March 2002 will go down as an exceptional date in A Coruña sporting history but a dark one for productivity,” joked reporter Xosé Pereiro on TVE1’s Telediario as he stood on the Rúa Cantón Grande detailing Depor’s bleary-eyed homecoming to the city the following afternoon.

The cup was paraded around the Riazor stadium with larger-than-life president Augusto César Lendoiro roaring: “The isn’t a cup like any other. This is the cup of the centenary of Real Madrid,” to raucous applause.

Amongst the delirium, seemingly the only one cognisant that the business end of the season was still to come was the old sage, Irureta. “The season isn’t finished yet, and I hope this is just a prelude to more triumphs.” 

His words seemed to work. Five days later, an unchanged eleven took the field at Highbury and demolished an Arsenal side that included Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira and Dennis Bergkamp, with a performance still remembered as one of Super Depor’s apogees. 

Real Madrid picked themselves up, and, as so often, the Champions League provided the trophy they demanded. Zinedine Zidane’s emblematic volley at Hampden Park also provided the moment of the centenary year. 

Two decades on, any reminiscence of Real Madrid’s centenary year is usually summed up by a single word. A term that plays on the famous failure of Brazil’s 1950 side to clinch the World Cup on home soil that was christened the Maracanazo.

El Centenariazo: The night that Depor gatecrashed the biggest birthday party of all time. And even stole their dinner reservation. 

Acknowledgements

Marcos Gendre’s excellent book, Branquiazul: Historia oral de los años dorados del Dépor, provided information for this article.

It is available to buy in both Kindle and paperback versions. 

Carmen: How Celta Vigo’s Wonder Woman took on Galicia’s drug cartels – and won

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment
Carmen Avendaño at the presentation of Néstor Araujo EFE/Salvador Sas

A woman hurries her youngest son through Vigo’s Casco Vello on their way to the city’s main market. As she looks up, she notices a man staring at her as he smokes in the doorway of the bar he owns and the pair lock eyes.

The woman feels her legs begin to tremble as her mind races with a thousand urgent thoughts before one imperative emerges: she must not be the one to look away.

She steels herself as she draws closer. Then, just as she approaches the bar’s terrace, the man drops his gaze to the ground and stubs out his cigarette.

A wave of relief washes over her, followed by a powerful realisation: it is their turn to be scared of us now. She has picked the biggest fight of her life, but she is certain she will win. 

Just the day before, the man’s name had been one of 38 that she had read out in front of a room packed full of press and local politicians — bars and their owners that were brazenly peddling hard drugs to the city’s youth. The women that had called the meeting had had enough. They were fed up with seeing lives all around them destroyed while others prospered from the tonnes of narcotics that flowed in unhindered along the region’s coastline.

Carmen Avendaño’s intervention would spark a profound shift, piling pressure upon those in authority that had been complacent or complicit with Europe’s biggest drug cartels to finally take meaningful action. It would take her years of unrelenting campaigning — surviving intimidation and attempts on her life. But it was she that would emerge victorious as Galicia’s clans were eventually dismantled.  

Years later, Avendaño would become a fixture on the board at Celta de Vigo. A football club once run by the region’s smugglers now represented by the woman who had defeated them.

It was 1986, and Vigo was awash with drugs. Over 1,000 miles of coastline made up of tiny islands and the famous, rugged inlets known as rías, combined with a proud seafaring tradition, made Galicia the perfect gateway for cartels seeking access to the old continent. Local knowledge and Latin American supply made for a powerful alliance, and it was estimated that during the 1980s, up to 80% of Europe’s cocaine supply was arriving via Spain’s northwest corner.

Smuggling was nothing new to the region. In the decades after Spain’s Civil War, alcohol, fuel and even medicine arrived secretly along Galician shores until contraband tobacco emerged as the staple. Fishing crews began supplementing their income by bootlegging cheap cigarettes from Cuba and Portugal during the 1950s, before more organised operations started to involve themselves in a practice that was lucrative, socially accepted and weakly legislated against.

An eccentric former Republican military pilot named Celso Lorenzo Villa was one such operator, becoming wealthy and popular enough to become the president of Celta Vigo in 1959. Celso Lorenzo was known for flying over Balaidos in his propeller plane during games, as the crowd below puffed away on cut-price cigarettes courtesy of their president.

His vice-president was Vicente Otero — nicknamed ‘Terito’ — the man that would become the lynchpin of smuggling operations in Galicia. That brief period became known as el Celta de Marlboro. But while the club’s dire finances were quickly fixed, on-field success proved more elusive. Despite travelling to away games in a luxurious state-of-the-art Dodge team bus — a gift from the president’s connections in Havana — the team narrowly missed out on a return to Primera with successive play-off defeats.

Tobacco continued to be a golden goose for decades. The local clans that controlled the rías ticked along discreetly, with those in authority bought off or unconcerned by what most considered a relatively harmless pursuit. But the arrival of the 1980s saw a new generation of trafficker on the scene: younger, more ambitious and with contacts in Colombia. The foremost of these was Sito Miñanco, a son and grandson of sailors, whose budding bootlegging career was interrupted by a six-month term in Madrid’s notorious Carabanchel prison. By chance, his spell there coincided with two of Colombia’s most powerful drug barons in Jorge Luis Ochoa Vázquez of the Medellín Cartel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela of the Cali Cartel.

Miñanco’s return to Galicia supercharged smuggling in the rías. Cocaine now flowed in, with clans old and new getting in on the act. Miñanco’s audacity and innovative use of technology to coordinate shipments saw him rapidly accumulating power and wealth. Inevitable comparisons were drawn between Miñanco and Pablo Escobar, with similarities evident in both style of dress and a philanthropic streak that naturally extended to football. 

Miñanco took control of the humble Club Juventud Cambados from his native village. His patronage powered the side from Spain’s fifth tier to the verge of Segunda, where at their peak, they were involved in a promotion race against the likes of Getafe and Leganés. Tales of lavish cash bonuses, off-season tours of Central and South America and promotion parties attended by Manuel Noriega (Miñanco was in a long-term relationship with the Panamanian dictator’s niece) were fabled throughout the glory years. Eventually, Miñanco’s attentions were drawn elsewhere, and the club slid back down the regional leagues.

But while some were enjoying the spoils of the flourishing joint venture with Colombia, many lives in Galicia’s towns and cities were being destroyed by drugs. A parallel boom in heroin was causing alarming levels of addiction. It was a drug that very rarely arrived via Galicia’s shores — usually routed to Spain through Rotterdam — but rising overall drug use and common distribution networks meant that its devastating consequences were something that families all over the region were rapidly confronted with.

Meetings of the residents’ association in the working-class barrio of Lavadores in Vigo usually centred around matters like noisy neighbours, parking issues and refuse collection. But topics on the agenda had taken a graver tone, with heroin use on the rise and families desperately trying to cope with the damage of a drug they knew little about. Even the associations’ committee — mainly comprised of the neighbourhood’s most conscientious parents — were not immune as many of their own children tumbled like dominoes into addiction.

One of those to fall was a young man named Jaime, the second son of committee member Carmen Avendaño. Along with other mothers, Avendaño began reading and seeking as much information as possible about the drug. An association emerged, named Érguete — Galician for ‘Rise Up’. And an ethos too: those who had fallen to addiction were victims who needed support. And that a spotlight should be shone on those profiting from the arrival of drugs to the region with impunity.

Local meetings soon became public declarations — beginning with that naming and shaming of Vigo’s bar owners in 1986. There were tours around the region, sparsely attended at first — particularly in the rías villages, with the audience mainly made up of connections of the local clans curious about what the group of mothers had to say. 

Within two years of their establishment, Érguete had 38 local branches and had more than captured the public’s imagination. Las madres contra la droga –– the mothers against drugs — led by Avendaño proved a compelling storyline for the media: a group of heartbroken mothers fearlessly taking the fight to the region’s drug traffickers. Quite literally, in the case of Érguete’s most famous demonstration — the 1994 storming of Pazo Baíon, the historic country mansion that was the home of clan leader Laureano Oubiña. Police were unable to control the crowds of women that shook the estate’s gates almost off their hinges while aiming cries of ‘murderer’ and’ thief’ at Oubiña.

It wasn’t just the baying crowds that Oubiña and his associates were now under siege from. The sea change in public opinion had finally moved the authorities into taking meaningful action. Érguete and Avendaño had played no small part in that shift. Indeed, so persuasive had they become that they now had a direct line to both the region and the country’s most powerful politicians.

Avendaño often recalls her first meeting with the President of Galicia, Manuel Fraga, a man more accustomed to characterising drug addicts as pariahs than victims. As she and other mothers recounted their experiences, Fraga sat motionless with his head bowed for so long that they presumed he had fallen asleep. It was only when they had all finished speaking that it became evident he had spent their entire talk in tears.

Avendaño’s role as the face of Érguete and her fearless public pronouncements inevitably placed her in danger. On three separate occasions, the brakes on her car were cut, and acts of intimidation were commonplace, but Avendaño remained unwavering. The only moment that came close to abandoning the fight was the harrowing discovery that another of her sons, Abel, had fallen into addiction. Those closest to Avendaño in Érguete quickly rallied around her, convincing her to continue campaigning.

Renewed political vigour brought about a 1990 investigation by Spain’s highest criminal court aimed at purging trafficking in Galicia and entrusted to a young judge named Baltasar Garzón. Operación Nécora — ‘Operation Crab’ proved to be spectacular if not emphatically successful. A 1994 trial at Madrid’s Casa de Campo saw 54 suspects brought to trial. Avendaño attended each day and testified against Oubiña, who was sentenced to 12 years for money laundering. 

The operation marked the beginning of the end for Galicia’s clans. Those who escaped Nécora were brought down in subsequent operations or captured while on the run. Sito Miñanco, who had successfully fled from Nécora, was eventually arrested in 1991 when police found him coordinating the arrival of two-and-a-half tonnes of cocaine to Galicia with nautical charts and a satellite phone from a chalet in suburban Madrid.

Avendaño and Érguete’s work continues some three decades on. In 2008 they returned to the scene of their most celebrated stand, the Pazo Baíon. The estate that was once an ostentatious success symbol of the drug cartels had been seized from the Oubiña clan by the state. Symbolically, the first chosen to burst through those gates that were once shaken with fury was Avendaño. She smiled broadly, taking the opportunity to highlight the progress made and thank those who had sacrificed so much to get there. Pazo Baíon now welcomes wine tourists to the area, with its reinstated vineyards producing a fine version of that more noble product of the rías — albariño wine.

Unsurprisingly, more than one screenwriter has been drawn to Avendaño’s extraordinary story. A 2005 film, Heroina, was based on her story. Avendaño gave up much of her time to consult on the script, but she admits finding it too painful to watch the final version. The Antena 3 series Fariña (since distributed by Netflix as Cocaine Coast) based on the journalist Nacho Carretero’s book of the same title extensively features Avendaño as it tells the story of the Galician smuggling scene of the 80s and 90s.

For over a decade, Avendaño has sat on the board of Celta Vigo for the most part as the only woman — “And the only from the left too,” she quipped in an interview with La Voz de Galicia, “They are quite a conservative bunch.” 

As a lifelong socialist, she admits that her beliefs have brought regular clashes with the board. Like the time she was the only director to oppose the club’s move to buy the Balaidos from the city: “A city should not be selling off its public assets.” 

But it seems that Celta’s famously stubborn board like having her around. “I once tried to resign, but they wouldn’t let me and I can say exactly how I feel about matters.”

Avendaño is a regular at player presentations — the new signings usually completely unaware of the incredible backstory of the kindly lady helping them hold up a shirt for the camera.

Many of the more established squad have a close relationship with Avendaño. Celta’s first team is based heavily on a nucleus of Gallegos from precisely the same neighbourhoods and villages as Avendaño and the fraternity of Érguete.

In February 2021, Celta Vigo took the field at Balaidos for their game against Elche in black armbands. They stood for a moment of solemn silence to remember the life of Abel, one of Avendaño’s sons that had struggled with addiction during the 1980s, who had died at the young age of 50. A poignant reminder of the dangers the youth of Galicia once faced. 

A Celta side featuring six local-born players provided a fitting tribute with a 3-1 win. The goals scored by young men from those same barrios of Vigo that Avendaño fought so valiantly to protect.

Acknowledgements

Nacho Carretero’s brilliant book, Fariña, provided information for this article.

It is available to buy in both Spanish and English.

Testicle tugging and gallivanting goalkeepers: When the cream of Colombia came to Real Valladolid

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment
Gonzalo Gonzalo, Carlos Valderrama and Francisco Maturana shake hands at Valderrama’s presentation, June 1991 EFE/Agustin Cacho

“Independent of the mistake, he’s brilliant — fundamental and decisive.”

He’d said pretty much the exact words a month previous, in the heat of Naples, where he backed his goalkeeper, René Higuita, after the error that would become one of the iconic vignettes in World Cup history. Positioned a lot closer to the halfway line than his own goal, Higuita attempted to remedy an imperfect first touch by dragging the ball away from the incoming Roger Milla with his studs. Milla stole the ball and raced away towards the empty goal, then to the corner flag. He just about managed a brief wiggle of those hips before being mobbed by ecstatic Cameroon teammates.

The goal sealed Colombia’s exit, but head coach Francisco Maturana was phlegmatic. After all, it was the first World Cup Colombia had qualified for since 1962 and the furthest the team had ever progressed. They were a goal down, deep into extra-time, and Higuita was being aggressive — as Maturana had always asked him to be. The pair had conquered a continent together; Maturana wasn’t about to abandon him now.

Quite the opposite. Now stood in the calmer environs of an empty José Zorrilla stadium discussing his new project as manager of Real Valladolid, Maturana openly told reporters that negotiations to sign Higuita were ongoing and that he saw him as a fundamental part of his plans.

It would take a year for Higuita to finally sign — only one of Maturana’s targets, midfielder Leonel Álvarez, was available immediately — but Higuita would arrive alongside the most famous Colombian footballer of all. Carlos Valderrama tempted across the Pyrenees to join the Colombian colony in Castile and León after three years in Montpellier.

The four Colombians’ arrival was part of an ambitious new president’s plan to propel a useful Valladolid side to European level. It would, though, be a gamble that quickly unravelled, leaving behind a club in relegation trouble and one of the most indelibly odd images in Spanish football history.

Serious, orderly and conservative: Maturana’s new home city of Valladolid stood in sharp contrast to the sprawling tropical mayhem of his native Medellín. There, Maturana had gone to secondary school with a certain Pablo Escobar but chose the more conventional career path of dentistry. He would see patients at his surgery in the afternoons, leaving mornings free to train with Colombia’s biggest club, Atlético Nacional, for whom he played a decade in defence for.

That ability to combine two jobs would come in useful as Maturana progressed into football management. After just one season in charge of Once Caldas, Maturana was appointed as head coach of the Colombian national team in the summer of 1987. Remarkably, he was soon courted by Nacional and ran the two roles alongside each other — basing the national side on the nucleus of his club squad.

It was seen as a controversial design, but one that was soon paying dividends. In May of 1989, Nacional became the first Colombian side to win the Copa Libertadores. Five months later, seven of that side featured for Colombia in a World Cup qualification play-off win over Israel that returned Colombia to football’s biggest stage after an absence of nearly three decades.

Progress through the knockout stage of Italia ’90 pushed Maturana’s stock higher. Still, he wasn’t an obvious choice for a European side to appoint. The obvious, though, was not something that regularly concerned Valladolid’s president-elect Gonzalo Gonzalo, a man who had made his money by marketing lighting solutions in countries like the USSR — markets that no regular Spanish business executive would consider viable. Gonzalo saw Maturana as a coach on the rise and moved quickly to bring him to Valladolid.

Gonzalo was also the owner of the city’s basketball team and had swiftly elevated them from mid-ranking plodders to European contenders. A pair of Lithuanian signings had been the key. No sooner had Arvydas Sabonis and Valdemaras Chomicius set foot off the plane from Vilnius than they were averaging over 40 points per game together as the side rose up the rankings.

It was perhaps that concept of importing a bloc of players that drove the arrival of Valladolid’s Colombians. The squad that Gonzalo and Maturana inherited was a reasonably talented one. Despite Fernando Hierro’s departure for Real Madrid, a young José Luis Caminero was attracting attention from bigger clubs while Gregorio Fonseca and Onésimo Sánchez formed a decent strike partnership. Maturana instantly added Álvarez, the general of his Nacional and Colombia midfield — with the longer-term intention of bringing in more of his compatriots.

Maturana’s first season saw Valladolid comfortably cruising in mid-table. By spring, Maturana had attracted the attention of Real Madrid, who were off the pace in the league and cycling through managers. A pre-contract was signed for Maturana to become the new Madrid head coach the following season. But Radomir Antić revived the side, rattling off eight wins from nine, including victories over Barcelona and Atlético Madrid, which bought the Serb a further season in charge. Maturana’s agreement was quietly filed away in an office drawer.

Unperturbed, Maturana looked ahead to the 1991-92 season, driving on his project at Valladolid. Prising Higuita away from Nacional had again become a convoluted process, but there were no such problems in tempting the other face of Colombia’s World Cup campaign. So keen, in fact, was Valderrama to join up with Maturana, he left Colombia’s preparations for the upcoming Copa America to fly to Spain to complete the deal.

Valderrama was the picture of relaxed, Santa Marta beach cool as his beaded wrists jangled to join a three-way handshake with Maturana and Gonzalo for the benefit of the cameras. But the smiles betrayed the storm that was blowing up back in Colombia. Valderrama’s unauthorised departure from camp had infuriated the Colombian Federation president, León Londono, who threatened to throw his captain out of the squad. It took a phone call from Maturana to defuse the situation — calmly talking his old boss down: “I just explained to him that suspending Carlos made no sense, and the country wouldn’t stand for it.”

Higuita finally set foot in Valladolid just as the pre-season was ending. Although he’d been reluctant to move from Nacional and his home city of Medellín, his eventual transfer proved something of a relief, as Higuita had caused a scandal in Colombia by paying a visit to his new manager’s old classmate, Escobar, in prison. The goalkeeper gave his new public an instant showreel of what to expect. In a friendly at home to the Brazilian side Internacional, Higuita was at fault for two goals and escaped a red card for dragging an opponent down in midfield. Though in typical fashion, in the resultant shoot-out he saved two penalties before converting the decisive kick himself.

As a club, Real Valladolid habitually flew under the radar, but the signing of the three Colombians had attracted a buzz around Spain as the season got underway. Moustachioed and corkscrew-haired, the trio made for an exotic sight as they posed for photographers alongside the manager they were excited to play for once more.   

Valladolid’s only other permitted overseas player, veteran goalkeeper Mauro Ravnić, was certainly not seen as glamorous enough to ask along to a photoshoot. The Croatian had agreed to stay on as a backup after the previous first-choice, Ángel Lozano, departed for Burgos, irked by the club’s pursuit of Higuita.

Remarkably, by January, Ravnić was the only foreign player that remained at the club. A tumultuous few months had seen his Colombian colleagues depart for home, while speculation around Maturana had long since switched from who was attempting to poach him to when he would get sacked.

For all the optimism, Valladolid made a disjointed start to the season at home to Sporting Gijón. A good first half gave way to a nervous second, particularly after a Sporting free-kick squirmed through the defensive wall, leaving Higuita scrambling in vain to keep the ball out. Fans left Zorrilla disgruntled as Maturana’s men failed to react and lumbered to a 0-1 defeat.

Next was a trip to Real Madrid where Valladolid lost by the same scoreline — again to a goal where Higuita was unconvincing. But the performance was transformed, and Valladolid deserved more from a full-blooded contest where Valderrama imperiously pulled the strings.   Madrid had to resort to hacking him down and some rather comical time-wasting from Paco Buyo to preserve the scoreline.

But the balance of play nor Valladolid’s domination of midfield was not what featured in the headlines, because as Mundo Deportivo put it: “Michel starred in a porn scene that will go down in the annals of history”. Valderrama and Real Madrid’s Michel had clashed several times throughout the game, and as they awaited a Valladolid corner, they clashed again, with the referee stepping in to restore order. Still intent on provoking his opponent, Michel switched tactics, grabbing Valderrama’s testicles — once almost tentatively, then again much more assiduously. Valderrama stood hands on hips, bewildered, quickly glancing downward to check that what he felt was happening really was happening.

The clarity of the pictures caught by cameras, the high profile of the two players and the sheer oddity of it all were a perfect storm, and the incident became a sensation that was talked about for weeks on end. Initial reaction centred around Valladolid’s call for disciplinary action and Michel’s attempts to brush the episode off: “It was just a joke. One of those things that happen in football that people don’t understand.”

Unable to see the funny side was José Javier Forcén, of the Competition and Discipline Committee. He handed Michel a 500,000 peseta (€3,000) fine for a ‘lack of decorum’, namely: “manipulating in public the gift that is exclusively given to males by nature.”

Valladolid’s improved showing at the Bernabéu proved to be something of a mirage and it took the side until October to register their first win. The mood was also growing sombre off the pitch, as an astonishing debt of 700 million pesetas (€4.2m) owed by tax authorities became public knowledge. It seemed that while the board had spent the summer negotiating the signings of some of the most glamorous players in world football, those in charge of the numbers had been desperately pleading the tax authorities for a moratorium on their debt just to stay solvent.

Tension transmitted itself to the stands, and Higuita’s alternative take on the goalkeeping position was soon drawing opprobrium. The Zorrilla crowd, tired of basic errors, grew intolerant of Higuita’s sorties downfield or attempts to flick the ball over oncoming forwards’ heads. Higuita began to be jeered whenever he left his box.

A broader debate on his style was taking place. Don Balon magazine ran a survey entitled: “Is Higuita an acceptable goalkeeper for Spanish football?” canvassing opinions from fellow first division goalkeepers and greats such as Luis Arconada. Far from fuelling the debate, the answers were sympathetic, with the goalkeeping fraternity unwilling to criticise the Colombian.

Despite the support, it eventually became too much for Higuita. After another error-strewn display in the final game before the Christmas break, Higuita made straight for the centre circle to wave goodbye to the home fans. In an improvised press conference, he declared he was returning home: “I wish the team all the luck in the world and I hope they can improve without me. It just hasn’t gone how we hoped. My head is just all over the place — the rest of my body too.” And with that, he was gone.

Higuita returned to Nacional — who Valladolid had yet to pay a single peseta of his transfer fee.

The new year brought no respite. Indeed the Colombian project blew up spectacularly during Valladolid’s visit to Barcelona. After 27 minutes, Valderrama fed the ball forward to Álvarez, who was clearly tripped. Valladolid players stopped in anticipation of the free kick, but none was forthcoming. Instead, the ball was whisked downfield, where Michael Laudrup played in Julio Salinas for the opening goal.

Valderrama and Álvarez were incandescent and made their feelings plain to referee Andújar Oliver. But Andújar held a reputation throughout the league of being particularly intolerant of dissent and haughtily produced yellows, then reds for both players.

The image of the pair sitting dejectedly on the floor in front of the Camp Nou dugout would be the last of them in Valladolid colours. Just ten days later, the club announced the receipt of much-needed two bank transfers. A total of $710,000 had arrived from Independiente de Medellín and América de Cali for the transfers of Valderrama and Álvarez respectively.

Maturana limped on without his countrymen. A February victory over Real Madrid was a rare highlight, but in early April, with the club fourth from bottom, Maturana was sacked.

The Colombian experiment was over.  But things did not improve for Valladolid, who slipped to joint-bottom of the table and were relegated for the first time in over a decade.

Maturana wasted no time getting back into the swing of things, appointed as manager of América de Cali and immediately winning the title. Colombia called once more, and Maturana was re-appointed as head coach ahead of the 1994 World Cup qualifying campaign. The qualifiers were played over an intense one month period. It was a format that seemed to suit Colombia, who hit a strong vein of form and travelled to Buenos Aires for their final game assured of at least a play-off position and needing a draw to seal automatic qualification. After intense Argentine pressure throughout the first half, Freddy Rincón put Colombia ahead just before half-time. Colombia then picked Argentina apart in a scintillating display of precise attacking football, running out 5-0 winners –– a result that went down as the most celebrated in Colombian football history.

While Maturana, Valderrama, and Álvarez were receiving an ovation by the Argentine fans at the Estadio Monumental, fellow Valladolid defector Higuita watched on television from his cell at La Modelo prison in Bogotá. Higuita was being held without bail on charges of kidnapping. His involvement in negotiating the release of a teenage girl had broken Colombia’s strict new anti-kidnapping laws. Higuita claimed he was being punished for the visit he had paid to Escobar and even went on hunger strike to protest his incarceration.

After his eventual release, Higuita was in no shape to make the Colombian squad that travelled to USA ’94 as what many people — including, famously Pelé — considered genuine contenders. But the weight of expectation and a horrifying backdrop of threats made against individual players saw the team eliminated after just two games. The subsequent murder of Andrés Escobar, the defender who had put through his own net in the decisive defeat to the USA, starkly illustrated the malevolent force that drug cartels had become in the country’s football scene. 

Drug money had, as in the rest of society, long been a feature of Colombian football, swelling club coffers directly or indirectly, allowing clubs to hold on to talent that usually departed for foreign shores. But after Pablo Escobar’s capture and killing, Colombia became unstable and ever more violent. Something that even the successful national team, which had become the symbol of hope, succumbed to.

Back in Valladolid, the man whose ambition had brought the Colombians together in the northwest of Spain had long since left the presidency. Gonzalo lasted barely as long as his star signings had after the eye-watering level of debt forced him to make way for a new board with a plan to manage the situation.

Some three decades later, only one memory will be conjured up if you mention to any Spanish football fan the Valladolid de los Colombianos. The enduring image of one of Real Madrid’s greatest players grabbing Colombia’s most famous player by the balls.

Ingeniously, in 2017, the magazine, Libero, revisited the incident with Valderrama to highlight the importance of testicular self-examination in the early detection of cancer. Alongside the slowed down footage, Valderrama demonstrates the correct way to inspect for lumps. 

“I want to thank you, my dear friend. For touching my balls in three simple steps. Like we all should do to prevent testicular cancer.”

“Gracias, Michel,” he concludes with that famous smile.

La Quinta del Reboot: When the Vulture Squad descended on Mexico

Brendan MaddenLeave a comment
David Leah – Mexsport

“To suddenly call up a Real Madrid player and ask them to come to your club when you’re still in the second division — well, you have to be a dreamer.”

In the summer of 1995, when the Real Madrid office staff told Emilio Butragueño to expect a call at home from a Mexican club, he presumed when the phone rang he would be talking to the owner of Club América or maybe Cruz Azul. But the accent on the other end of the line was Asturian, not Mexican, and he declared himself to be the owner of a club that Butragueño had never heard of. Mind you, even in Mexico not many had heard of Atlético Celaya.

The voice on the phone outlined his grand plans for the club on the brink of promotion. Butragueño was unconvinced, but Enrique Fernández was as insistent as he was persuasive. Multiple calls per day eventually swayed Butragueño into hopping on a flight to come and see for himself. Boarding the plane, he almost felt like he was wasting his time. He was convinced his future lay east, not west — Japan’s shiny new J League had been his preferred destination — a new challenge with the added benefit of never having to play against his beloved Real Madrid. 

But after three days in Guanajuato, the people, the weather, the pace of life and the overtures from Fernández had changed his mind. Butragueño called his father and told him he would sign for Celaya. “If the team can more or less function, then it will be fine. We’ll move here.”

Butragueño signed for one season but stayed for three: “From a family point of view, it was probably the happiest three years of my life.” On the field, things were more than just functional. In Butragueño’s first season, newly-promoted Celaya nearly achieved a fairytale, coming within a flick of that familiar blonde head of winning the 1996 Mexican championship in the Estadio Azteca.

Butragueño would be joined in Mexico by two more members of the Quinta del Buitre in Michel and Rafa Martín Vázquez, as well as the man who provided more goals than anyone else to that Real Madrid side that won five consecutive titles, Hugo Sánchez. Key members of one of the most revered Real Madrid sides of all time reunited by Fernández’s vision and audacity. 

Heck, he even persuaded Emilio Butragueño to play against Real Madrid.

The 1983-84 season saw Real Madrid in somewhat of a funk. The previous season had ended with Madrid finishing as runners-up in no less than five separate competitions. The gloom was not helped by a first-round UEFA Cup exit to Sparta Prague. But the Madrid public found solace in the emergence of a generation of players that had powered the club’s B team — Real Madrid Castilla — to the top of the second division. 

In November of that season, El Pais carried a full-page profile that detailed Castilla’s remarkable progress under manager Amancio Armario. The article was headlined ‘Amancio y la Quinta de ‘El Buitre” — ‘Amancio and the Vulture Squad’ and would become almost a sacred artefact in the annals of Real Madrid. 

Journalist Julio-César Iglesias picked out for particular praise a quintet of players with a combined age of 94 years. Midfielders Michel and Martín Vázquez were joined by the winger, Miguel Pardeza, and then defensive midfielder, Manuel Sanchís, in the Quinta del Buitre. But readers were left in no doubt as to who was the pick of the bunch — Butragueño, the blonde boy who had already scored 14 goals in 10 games that season and had already been christened with one of football’s most enduring nicknames. “The Vulture has demonstrated a thousand times in Castilla that the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. He advances in zig-zags, or more precisely: zig-zags of silver, like flashes of lightning. His runs into the area are like a flash — an explosion of the most rapid, dazzling light.” 

The article concluded with a flourish, urging first team manager Alfredo Di Stefano that: “now is the time to mobilise the Quinta del Buitre. To call for their imagination, discipline and quality.”

El Pais, 14th November 1983

While Di Stefano didn’t exactly conform to Iglesias’ suggested timeframe of “two to three games”, each player was gradually introduced, and within a year, four of the five were regulars in the first team — by then managed by Amancio. Pardeza was the only one of the five who struggled to graduate, eventually going on loan and then permanently to Real Zaragoza.   

The remaining quartet helped form the nucleus of a team that defined an era. Supported by established veterans such as Juanito, Paco Buyo, José Camacho and Rafael Gordillo and the signings of Hugo Sánchez and Jorge Valdano, Madrid won back-to-back UEFA Cups before winning five consecutive Spanish titles scoring unprecedented amounts of goals. Their tally of 107 goals in 1989/90 — 38 of which were scored by Sánchez with a single touch — would not be bettered until some two decades later.

The emergence of the Quinta del Buitre coincided with an explosion of the music, arts and nightlife scenes in a Madrid finally free from the conservatism and repression of the Franco era. With the city culturally liberated by the scene known as the Movida Madrileña and economically thriving during a period of unprecedented growth, it seemed the only thing missing for Madrileños of a Real Madrid persuasion was an elusive seventh European Cup. 

But three consecutive semi-finals were as far as the side went. The third of which saw Madrid dismantled in the San Siro by Arigo Sacchi’s Milan, who repeated the feat six months later, dumping Madrid out of Europe in October. To make matters worse, another rising force — Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona — were about to end the Quinta’s domestic hegemony on their way to them becoming the side that brought the European Cup back to Spain for the first time in 26 years.

By the end of the 1994-95 season, Butragueño was struggling to hold down his place in the side with the emergence of a 17-year-old named Raúl González. Refusing a one-year contract extension on much reduced terms, Butragueño took to the field at the Bernabéu for the last time in a specially arranged tribute game against Roma. He spent the summer pondering whether he should uproot his young family and take up the offer from Japan or explore other avenues. Then the phone rang.

Flushed with business success and living in the afterglow of the wildly successful 1970 World Cup, Enrique Fernández surveyed the Mexican football scene for a club to buy. 

Fernández had departed his native Langreo in Asturias three years previously, at the age of 27, to take charge of the Gigante chain of supermarkets in Mexico City. It didn’t take him long to strike out on his own, and Fernández soon founded Productos Alimenticios Asturias, a company that supplied bakeries across the country and was well on its way to becoming the publicly listed Lastur.

Along with some business associates, Fernández took a controlling stake in a second division club called Toros de Texcoco which over the decades went through various mergers and mutations under Mexican football’s bewildering franchise system. In 1994 a three-way merger resulted in the creation of a new club called Atlético Celaya, which held a license to play in Mexico’s second-tier and Fernández as majority owner.

Remarkably, the new club won promotion at the first time of asking, beating one of Mexico’s oldest clubs, Pachuca, with the only goal of a two-legged play-off final in June. A month previous, Fernández and a fellow director had been watching Butragueño’s farewell against Roma on TV when someone in the room mentioned trying to sign him. Figuring they had nothing to lose, Fernández got to work, and while Celaya were steadily progressing through the play-offs, their owner was making daily calls to Madrid trying to woo one of the world’s most famous players into playing for a club that barely anyone knew of.

With promotion secured and Butragueño finally sold, Celaya announced the signing to the world. “We were so moved when we watched his farewell game on TV that we thought maybe we could try and sign him. Back then it was a dream, but every now and then a dream comes true,” beamed Fernández, who, true to form, had even managed to work a friendly between Celaya and Real Madrid into the deal — the only time El Buitre ever faced the club of his life.

Butragueño explained his thoughts on the move to the assembled press. “It’s been a very difficult decision to make — to leave Real Madrid and take my family to a different country. But I have good friends in Mexico and it’s has always been a big part of me since I had one of the games that marked my career there.”  Butragueño was referring to Spain’s 5-1 demolition of a brilliant Denmark side at Mexico ’86, in which Butragueño had scored four. That game had taken place in Querétaro, just a short distance from his new home in Celaya.

While his family settled into their tranquil new life, Butragueño got down to acclimatising to the altitude, his teammates and a club that, while ambitious, was still a little haphazard — certainly in comparison to the palatial life at Real Madrid. 

The club had yet to acquire a training ground, meaning sessions were rotated around often bumpy factory sports facilities.  Most lacked changing rooms which meant a teenager on a moped would call daily at Casa Butragueño to drop off and collect training kit.  

A memorable incident occurred in an away game at León, where a forgetful kit-man realised to his horror that he hadn’t packed their star man’s shirt. Fortunately, by that point, Butragueño’s shirt was one of the best-sellers with the country’s enterprising hawkers, and a replacement was sourced from a stall outside the ground. Butragueño scored twice in the counterfeit shirt — the only shirt on the field to bear a player’s name — and the relieved kit-man began a tradition of purchasing a knock-off number seven shirt at every away game. 

Results on the field, though, were anything but dodgy. After a 34-game regular season, Celaya qualified for the Championship play-offs alongside the usual giants América, UNAM Pumas and Cruz Azul. A brace of away goals from Butragueño edged Celaya past Monterrey before an astonishing 6-1 aggregate demolition of Veracruz in the semi-final.

A 1-1 draw in Celaya in the first leg of the final against the reigning champions, Necaxa, sent the title to be decided on the biggest stage of them all. 110,000 spectators crammed into the Estadio Azteca with a remarkable level of support for the club that had captured the public’s imagination, their ranks swelled by a significant number of Spanish ex-pats eager to cheer on Butragueño.

Celaya spent much of the first half under the cosh, stretched by Ecuadorean legend Álex Aguinagua’s midfield promptings and surviving a scare when Mexican international Alberto García Aspe crashed a volley against the post. As the game wore on, their opponents dropped deeper, but stifling defence denied Celaya a clean sight of a historic winning goal. Until that was, the 86th minute when Celaya won a free kick on the right. As the ball was delivered, Butragueño was positioned on the penalty spot and shaping to run towards the near-post. But in a zig-zag flash of movement that invoked that famous El Pais article, when the ball arrived, Butragueño was at the back-post, six yards from goal and completely free.

But the header was poor. Seeking to flick the ball inside the far post, Butragueño didn’t apply quite enough contact, and the ball glanced horribly wide. Both hands sank deep into that curly thatch of fair hair before he quickly snapped back into professional mode, hunting down the ball for the resultant goal-kick. 

Necaxa held on. Atlético Celaya decades later more fondly remembered as runners-up than their opponents who won three titles in four years.

Butragueño wasn’t finished there. And nor was Fernandéz, who went on the trail of recruiting more of the Quinta del Buitre. First came Michel –– the man who played more games with Butragueño than anyone else. Rafa Martín Vázquez joined them briefly as his career, beset by injury, wound down. Hugo Sánchez was persuaded to abandon the fledgling MLS, reuniting the strike force that had combined so potently in Madrid.

Although the addition of superstars was fun, it was no guarantee of success, and though Celaya survived in the first division, they would never again reach the play-offs.

Michel and Sánchez both retired at Celaya — Sánchez typically bowing out with a one-touch screamer. Butragueño soon followed. After three seasons and 91 appearances for the club that he had never heard of, he took to a field for the final time in the spring of 1998 with an injured Martín Vázquez watching on against a Puebla side that included Pardeza — the only one of the Quinta that had played less than 300 games for Real Madrid. 

An uneventful 0-0 draw left both teams safe from relegation. Pardeza and Butragueño left the field together, the latter pausing to tell the waiting reporters that: “Everything has a beginning and an end. I can tell you with 99% certainty that I’m now an ex-footballer.”

In Amsterdam, just over a month later, the last member of the Quinta still with Real Madrid would finally get his hands on the trophy they had so strived for. Sanchís captained Real Madrid to a seventh European Cup that had been 32 years and several generations in the making.

Celaya would continue on in the topflight until a bizarre episode in 2002 when their license was purchased by airline magnate Jorge Rodríguez Marié. Rodríguez renamed and moved the team across the country before racking up a mountain of debt and having the franchise stripped just six months later. 

Football returned to a Celaya when a new club, spiritually if not legally linked to the Atlético of the nineties, was born. Sadly, attempts to rename their stadium in honour of Butragueño ended typically bogged down in local politics and were blocked in 2018. 

In that same year, former owner Fernández died at the age of 68 at his home in Cancún. His ashes were split, with one half sent to his native Langreo. The other half scattered in the town he put on the footballing map the day he picked up the phone and dialled the number of one of the most famous players in the world.

‘Paz olímpica’ : How the Barcelona Olympics brought gold and a brief moment of unity to Spanish football

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As he climbed to his feet, detaching himself from the celebratory heap of bodies below, Pep Guardiola could see his prediction had been wrong: “I’m confident there will be about 60,000 there, but filling it is impossible.”

He’d seen it packed before, of course. But this was different, surreal even. The entirety of the 95,000 crowd inside Camp Nou was on its feet, with seemingly every other person twirling a Spanish flag in celebration. In the presidential palco, the royal family stood: relaxed and beaming, having even received an ovation upon their arrival. An arena that had rarely ever hosted a Spanish national side — and never has since — intoxicated by the scene on the field as the team in red wildly celebrated the last-minute goal, which left them just a few precious seconds away from Olympic gold.

That sultry Saturday night in August 1992, Barcelona was the centre of the sporting world. A night that was the culmination of a hugely successful Olympics that showcased Barcelona as a beautiful, compelling and progressive city. A night when everything just fell into place. Like the royal party being whisked across the city — having witnessed Fermin Cacho’s 1500 metre triumph in the Olympic stadium — in perfect time to see the Spanish footballers’ comeback at Camp Nou that clinched Spain’s 13th gold medal of the games.

Spain, and Barcelona, had triumphed. And for a few weeks at least, Spanish and Catalan identities functioned in relative harmony: a paz olímpica — an Olympic peace. Careful deployment of the Catalan flag, anthem and language throughout the games fostering a duality that culminated in the scenes at that iconic Gold Medal match.

While FC Barcelona were basking in the glow of their first-ever European Cup win, the Spanish national team was somewhat in the doldrums. Eliminated in the last sixteen of Italia ’90 by Yugoslavia, they failed to qualify for the 1992 European Championships in Sweden. That dismal form saw head coach Luis Suárez dismissed, with Vicente Miera put in brief charge before being shunted aside for the arrival of Javier Clemente. Instead, Miera was given the job of constructing an under-23 squad for the forthcoming Olympics.

It was a task he took to assiduously. The Cantabrian took the squad away from the bright lights and the mounting excitement to prepare in the cool and quiet of Cervera de Pisuerga in the Palencine mountains, just south of his native region. It was impossible to escape everything, though. Clemente was an unwelcome visitor whose forthright observations irked the quiet and cerebral Miera.

Although the team would be forever associated with that night in Barcelona, they barely set foot in the city until the day before the final. After that long training camp in the mountains, the team were based in Valencia, where they would play their games in a mainly half-empty Mestalla.

Miera had a talented squad at his disposal. Toni Jiménez had won the goalkeeping spot despite strong competition from Santi Cañizares. The Atlético Madrid pair of Roberto Solozábal and Juanma López were joined by Abelardo of Sporting Gijón in a three-man central defence. Barça and Real Madrid provided the wing-backs in Albert Ferrer and Mikel Lasa. Guardiola — in an incongruous number nine shirt — pulled the strings in midfield alongside Tenerife’s Rafa Berges, allowing Madrid’s Luis Enrique to break forward in support of his club-mate Alfonso and Kiko Narváez, then of Cádiz.

The opening match saw little by the way of Olympic spirit. A bad-tempered game against a talented Colombian side, spearheaded by Faustino Asprilla, saw a remarkable four red cards and 11 bookings. Amid the mayhem, Spain ran out handsome 4-0 winners.

Aside from dodging Clemente, the players spent their downtime in Valencia happily playing cards and cheering Miguel Induráin’s relentless march to a second Tour de France. But the urge to see a bit more of the glitz and glamour of the games led to a request to attend the opening ceremony that was initially declined by Miera and the Federation. This led to a somewhat tense stand-off before the Federation eventually relented, chartering a plane for the players to join the Parade of Nations and witness the emblematic lighting of the Olympic cauldron by Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo.

It kept the squad happy. “To have missed a night as special as that would have been unforgivable,” said Ferrer, “To be there amongst the best sportspeople in the world was something very unique.”

Back in Valencia, they cruised through their group, accounting for Egypt and Qatar without conceding a goal. That set up a huge quarter-final against Cesare Maldini’s Italy that featured the likes of Demetrio Albertini, Dino Baggio and Guissepe Favalli. A cool finish from Kiko and an incorrectly disallowed late Italian goal saw Spain through to the semi-finals, within sight of Barcelona and the podium.

The semi-final drew 38,000 to Mestalla as the team finally registered on the general public’s radar. A clinical 2-0 win over Ghana propelled them from the middle to the front pages of the sports dailies as the country sensed the prospect of another Spanish gold.

They could finally pack their bags for the centre of the universe — Barcelona — arriving the day before the final, checking in to the Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I, just off the Avinguda Diagonal. The star-struck squad were delighted to rub shoulders with the array of sports stars and celebrities that came and went through the hotel’s lobby. Guardiola, in particular, finding it hard to hide his delight at meeting Steffi Graf.

An even more authentic Olympic experience awaited them after the game. The sheer number of dignitaries arriving for the closing ceremony meant the hotel could not accommodate them for a second night. Win or lose, the team would take up lodging in the Olympic Village. That was something that Miera sounded less than impressed with: “I’m told it’s pretty much bedlam there every night, but we don’t have any other choice.”

At Camp Nou, Spain started strongly, but their opponents, Poland, were proving to be durable opposition and took the lead on the stroke of half-time — the first goal Spain had conceded in the tournament.  

Abelardo’s powerful header drew the teams level before Kiko bullied the Polish defence to put Spain ahead. Still, Poland would not conform to the script and equalised, leaving the game headed to a nervy period of extra-time as Spain won a corner in the 90th minute.

Ferrer’s poorly hit cross fell to Luis Enrique. His low drive was blocked but fell for Kiko, who took one touch with his left before calmly lofting the ball over the goalkeeper with his right, dissecting the two players on the goal line to give Spain gold.  

Kiko collapsed to his knees. Ferrer was the first to join him, followed by Abelardo, then Luis Enrique, then seemingly everyone. Guardiola joined them before rising again, taking in the stadium he was so familiar with rapt in scenes it would never see again.

“I’m over the moon,” grinned Ferrer, “A gold medal in your own home ground! The truth is I doubted there would be so many people here, but I also thought there could never be an empty Camp Nou.”

The squad patiently lined up to receive Spain’s first-ever football gold, waiting for their medals beneath a giant scoreboard that subtly displayed the scoreline in Catalan: ‘Polonia 2 Espanya 3‘. They then turned to face the Spanish flag as Camp Nou — a stadium where the nation anthem is regularly drowned out by boos — respectfully stood for the rendition, even applauding as the royal family appeared on the big screen.

As the players finally jumped off the podium, 11 kilometres away in the satellite town of Badalona, the US basketball team featuring Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Larry Bird were just tipping off on their way to the most inevitable and star-studded gold of the games. As if it were even needed, the ‘Dream Team’ had added yet another layer of glamour and would ultimately lend a nickname to the host city’s swaggering European champions, who were in the middle of four domestic titles in a row.

But club loyalties and old antagonisms were far from the minds of those celebrating the gold medal win. At the post-match celebrations, Barça president, Josep Luís Nuñez, and his Madrid counterpart, Ramón Mendoza, for once toasted the same victory — Barça vice-president Joan Gaspart joining the Real Madrid table to clink glasses with Mendoza.

The party rolled on, well into the night. A conga wound around the room, featuring the famously reserved Miera and his assistant, László Kubala. Nuñez led the singsong, starting with the usual party staples before the entire room belted out ‘Que viva España’ as one. In the spirit of the occasion, that was immediately followed by a raucous version of the patriotic Catalan classic ‘El meu avi‘.

Amid the revelry, a high ranking Federation executive joked: “Maybe we should move all of those national team games we’ve been playing in Valencia and Seville to here.”

The sardonic response from a Barça board member would prove to be more prophetic: “Don’t worry. Real Madrid are here for the first game of the season in a few weeks time. It’ll all be back to normal by then.”