There was a distant time when footballers didn’t live in a bubble, when journalists could talk to them without waiting for a publicity stunt and their salaries didn’t offend fans.
That time is what Josep Maria Fusté, a right-handed footballer who kicked fouls and penalties with his left, had to live through, who died on Thursday. When Spain won the European Championship in Madrid against the USSR, with Franco in the box office (1964), he was 22 years old and the regime wanted to give him a car. He was grateful, but replied that he preferred to be released from military service.
They granted it in exchange for him to swear to the flag dressed as a soldier in Sant Climent Sescebes. President Miró Sans also wanted to present him with a car as a signing bonus and Fusté told him to pay him a decent salary, that he would buy the car for himself. He did so and shortly afterwards acquired a six-hundred note with the Barça shield on the front.
Contrast this story, for example, with that of Cristiano Ronaldo, who bought a Bugatti, of which only eight units had been manufactured and which cost him eight million. Last summer he crashed it in Mallorca, but it didn’t change. His salary at Al-Nasrr of Saudi Arabia is 400 million euros, tax-free. He lives at the Four Seasons in Riyadh, where he has reserved 17 suites for Georgina, her five children and the staff. And he has an escape plane, a Gulf Stream G-200 that cost him 20 million, which he is thinking of selling because it is already eight years old.
Time was time, Serrat sang. And certainly, romanticism in football died a long time ago. But if he had survived in time, he would be controlled by the footballers’ agents to collect commissions. At least Fusté and Cristiano share the same anecdote. Both planted the Head of State in separate receptions in El Pardo.
Ronaldo did not go to the dinner offered by Felipe VI to Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. And Fusté did not appear at the reception offered to him by Franco, after winning over the Russians. In fact, he got there by taxi when it was over. “I fell asleep, I had celebrated the victory against the USSR and in the morning I didn’t hear the alarm.” Even the excuses of other times were better.
