Fear and Loathing in La Liga by Lowe Sid

Author:Lowe, Sid [Lowe, Sid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781568584515
Publisher: Nation Books

13

JOHAN CRUYFF SUPERSTAR

FRANCO’S SECRET POLICE ENTERED the parish of Santa María Mitjancera on the morning of October 28, 1973, and broke up a meeting called by the clandestine resistance movement the Asamblea de Catalunya. A hundred and thirteen arrests were made and most of the suspects were imprisoned in the Modelo jail, where they continued to conspire and to plan for the post-dictatorship era. Among them were many who would later became significant political figures in Catalonia, including Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, the future leader of the Esquerra Republicana and vice president of the Catalan government. When they reached the police station Josep Solé Barberà, one of the key members of the outlawed Catalan Communist Party, complained that the arrest could not have come at a worse time. In his pocket were two tickets for that night’s match at the Camp Nou.

It was not just any match either. Barcelona versus Granada featured the long-awaited debut of Johan Cruyff. Like Solé Barberà, the Communist intellectual Xavier Folch was also arrested on the morning of the game but at least he was compensated: a few days later an envelope arrived for him in prison containing a signed photograph of Barcelona’s new star. Solé Barberà and Folch had missed some performance. The Camp Nou was packed and Barcelona won 4–0. Cruyff scored twice and ran the game. La Vanguardia declared Barça “revitalized,” its match report opening by inviting fans to “imagine what Barcelona would have achieved if they did not have Cruyff in the side.”

Actually, they had a pretty good idea. Before the match, Barcelona were fourth from the bottom. They had won just two of their seven league games, drawing 0–0 at home against Real Madrid and Racing Santander, and losing at Elche, Celta de Vigo, and Real Sociedad. They had already been knocked out of the UEFA Cup by Nice. In the meantime, Cruyff had played five specially arranged friendlies as he awaited his competitive debut and had scored six times, including a hat trick, in his presentation. One cover story depicted him in bellbottoms and a striped sweater, huge shirt collar, jacket draped coolly over his shoulder. “Cruyff: the only hope to avoid the chaos,” it declared.

It was more than just the 1973–1974 season, too. “We had got to the final game with a chance of winning the league for three successive seasons but in the end we hadn’t won any of them. In total, we had gone fourteen years without winning the league. What with bad luck and referees, culés had started to despair,” teammate Charly Rexach recalls. “And then Cruyff arrived.”

A single signing changed everything. “History repeats itself sometimes. There are men sufficiently talented to repeat the phenomenon of the Kubala–Di Stéfano, Di Stéfano–Kubala era,” claimed El Mundo Deportivo. They were only half right: Cruyff was right up there with Kubala and Di Stéfano; what he did not have was another player who was his match. For Barcelona, he became practically a deity. Joan Laporta would later become Barcelona’s president.

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