Rab McWilliam - Life in La Liga: The Story of Spanish Club Football

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2019 by

ARENA SPORT

An imprint of Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.arenasportbooks.co.uk

Copyright Rab MacWilliam 2019

ISBN: 9781909715745

eBook ISBN: 9781788851701

The right of Rab MacWilliam to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh

www.polarispublishing.com

Printed in Great Britain by MBM Print SCS Limited, East Kilbride

Id like to thank Dan MacWilliam, my late father, for taking me to watch my first football match at Invernesss Clach Park in the Highland League when I was around five or six. He also drove me down to Glasgow on a few occasions for big games at Hampden and Ibrox when I was still a kid. He initiated and encouraged my love for the game, and for this, and much else, I will always be grateful.

More specifically, I greatly appreciate the feedback I received on earlier drafts of this book from my son Nick MacWilliam and Simon Liebesny Gooners both and from my Stoke Newington neighbours, Pat Newman (who spends several months of the year in his villa in Murcia) and Jos Fernndez (a Gijn man and a proud supporter of Sporting de Gijn). I much appreciate their opinions and comments.

At Arena Sport, freelance copy editor Ian Greensill carried out a meticulous job, and saved me a good deal of embarrassment by pointing out several basic errors in my text. Any errors which remain are down to me, not Ian nor anyone else. My publisher and editor, Pete Burns, had the courage to contract me to write this book, and Pete has been immensely supportive and helpful throughout the project.

Last, but by no means least, my wife Anne Beech listened to my arcane Spanish football stories, ignored my cursing and raving at my computer, and permitted me sole access to the downstairs study with the same combination of compassion, understanding and disbelief which she has brought to our thirty-five year partnership. Many thanks, my dear.

As a young lad growing up in the Highlands of Scotland, I spent every spare moment kicking a ball around in my primary school playground, local park, back yard of my house, anywhere I could find pretending to myself that I was Denis Law strutting imperiously around Hampden Park or Jim Baxter lording it over Ibrox.

I preferred playing the game to watching it but, when my father took me to Ibrox and Hampden or when I saw games on TV, the Rangers side of the early 1960s, which included Baxter, John Greig, Willie Henderson et al., became my boyhood heroes. I was also enthralled by the Real Madrid team which, in the 1960 European Cup final at Hampden Park, ruthlessly and sublimely destroyed Eintracht Frankfurt.

I watched grainy, black-and-white television replays of that game, often described as the greatest game of football ever played, and marvelled at the passing skills, dribbling talent, goalscoring ability and footballing artistry of, in particular, Di Stfano, Pusks and Gento. This was in a different class altogether to the football I knew, and that game initiated my enduring interest in Spanish club football.

When my playing days were over, I became a spectator and student of football, and I continued my attachment to the game as a book publisher in London by publishing a number of football titles, in particular British club histories. More recently, as an author I have written several books on the game without having incurred the burden of becoming a specialist on any of its aspects, as I am a generalist at heart when it comes to football.

However, although a few of my published titles, normally historical in their focus, have covered the European game, this is the first book which I have written exclusively about the game in Spain, the country whose club football had so fascinated me when I was a boy.

I have followed the fortunes of such clubs as Sevilla, Barcelona, Atltico Madrid, Real Betis, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, as well as the many other clubs which have constituted, in differing eras and with varying degrees of success, the Primera Divisin (La Liga) and the Segunda Divisin, or second tier, of Spanish club football.

Over the years, I have watched Spanish clubs in both domestic and European competitions, and have gained an insight into, and an admiration for, the game as it is played at the highest levels in Spain. More importantly, and as nothing beats being a spectator in the stadium while a match is being fiercely contested, I relished the European evenings I spent standing on the North Bank at Arsenals old Highbury Stadium.

At Highbury, I watched my local club Arsenal play in the European Cup, UEFA Cup and Cup Winners Cup such sides as Valencia, Real Zaragoza, Deportivo de La Corua, Real Mallorca, Celta de Vigo, Villarreal and Real Madrid. There always seemed to be a heightened air of expectation and excitement in the stadium when a Spanish club was our opponent, more so than with any other European club. As was proudly proclaimed in the 1960s by Spains Tourism Ministry, and as was obvious on the pitch: Spain is different.

This being the case, I decided to write this book for the reader who is interested in Spanish football and football generally but who has a far from expert knowledge of the games origins and development in the country, and also of its contemporary influence within Spain and, more recently, in European competition. In the book I do not presume a facility in the Spanish language (or languages) as, when using Spanish Castilian (or Basque or Catalan) words and phrases, I provide English translations. Also, for those readers who may be unfamiliar with certain Spanish cities and regions, I try to convey, as concisely as I can, the spirit of place.

As I was researching and writing this book, I discovered that Spain is indeed different. The story of club football in Spain is significantly more complex and diverse than I had previously supposed, and much more so than that of most other footballing nations. This complex diversity, albeit in a modified form, remains in the Spanish game to the present day.

Alongside the history, I have included short biographies of personalities and outstanding players, famous and infamous incidents and matches, humorous and occasionally tragic events, club and regional rivalries, instances of chicanery and double-dealing, the role of the media and the fans, Spanish football terminology and other reflections on aspects of the Spanish game.

Finally, and importantly in my view, it is impossible fully to comprehend Spanish club and regional football without the inclusion of a brief historical and political background. So, from time to time in the book I provide this information. The development of the club game in Spain has been so intimately involved with wider domestic political events that, without such an explanatory context, some of what I say would be either misleading or meaningless. However, as this is very much a book about football, I keep to a minimum these necessary contextual guides.