A meter from the area, with the quadriceps destroyed, Amancio’s fallen body anticipated football of the 21st century on a Sunday in June 1974. There would come a day when television – and not the public or the referees – would eradicate man-hunting, a sport of which Amancio was a victim that afternoon at the Los Cármenes stadium in Granada.
Miraculously, a TVE camera was there. And Troy burned…
Amancio Amaro, rest in peace, was a legendary winger for Real Madrid, with whom he won the 1966 European Cup. And the Euro Cup with Spain in 1964. They called him El Brujo, an accurate nickname because he was very fast, he feinted and dribble like if I were Brazilian and not Galician. He had genius. Even tempered.
El Brujo had not set foot in Los Cármenes for two years, the most poetic of names that a defensive fortress has ever received. Some of the most forceful defenders –synonymous at the time with violent– on the globe met there, among which the Paraguayan Pedro Fernández and the Argentine Montero Castillo stood out.
Three years earlier, good Fernández had left the Santiago Bernabeu stadium on a stretcher. Amancio was no stranger.
I’ll wait for you in Granada.
It is not Lorca: it was the law of football.
After two years of prudence, the wise Miguel Muñoz lined up Amancio on June 8, 1974. The winger was 34 years old and had a lot of military service. I saw the entry on TVE, which did not warn that the images could hurt the susceptibility of the audience. Amancio receives a ball from Del Bosque, goes from a rival parallel to the edge of the area and appears, like a runaway horse, Fernández’s extended leg halfway up. The closest thing to a dry goring…
Unfortunately for him, Jaume Oliva Fortuny from Tarragona was refereeing the match. A few years ago, he recognized his mistake, which would cost him international status, in an interview with this newspaper: he did not see the play. “It was a counterattack, Amancio had the ball and he jumped into the air. I stopped the game and walked over. He did not stop shouting: ‘Oliva, what has he given me, what has he given me!’ But no injury was seen. In the middle, Velázquez, a very polite player, told me: Amancio has a tennis ball in his thigh. He has put all the tacos in it, ”Oliva recalled.
It was not for less: 150 stitches.
For the first time, courtesy of television, a treacherous attack did not go unpunished. There was no reconciliation. Fernández settled in Granada, where he was very loved. He passed away a couple of years ago. Today he would not have dared to let go of his elbow.
