Savagery… 25 Years Later.

To many Barcelona fans, all 120,000 of them that came to the Nou Camp that fate­ful Sep­tem­ber 24th saw that this was going to be their year.  If hav­ing won the Copa del Rey the year before was any indi­ca­tion, the match against defend­ing champ Ath­letic Bil­bao would be their defin­ing state­ment.  Lit­tle would they know that it would be the begin­ning of the end of an era.  It was a day when they game on the field was vio­lated by the men that had per­sonal vendet­tas of their own.  The most intense rivalry of the moment in Spain was between the Basques and the Cata­lans.  To many peo­ple, Barcelona´s rivalry with Bil­bao reached a boil­ing point and was much more intense than the one they had against Real Madrid dur­ing that three-year period.  The matches between these two were more steel cage fights than skill­ful chess matches.  They were all-out bat­tles on the pitch and the rea­son would be due to the sto­ry­lines and sub­plots that developed

Barcelona mid­fielder Bernd Schus­ter knew that he was going to be fac­ing Andoni Goikotxea.  This man tore his ACL just two sea­son before, caus­ing him to miss nine months of the 1981–82 sea­son.  So there would be that sense of revenge on behalf of the Ger­man mid­fielder.  If there was one man that Schus­ter would have liked to seen hurt it was ¨The Bil­bao Butcher¨.  He got his rep­u­ta­tion not because of the skill he had with the ball or his finesse while run­ning around the pitch.   His tough guy image was as vis­i­ble as Rus­sia from Sarah Palin´s backyard.

Another sub­plot that got fans´ blood boil­ing  was also the exchange of words between coaches Javier Clemente and César Luis Menotti that made the inten­sity of the game esca­late even more.

Vendet­tas and side­plots were the  soup du jour in Span­ish soci­ety back in 1983.  It was a time in which Span­ish soci­ety began to see their lives affected on an every­day basis by three let­ter– ETA.  The Basque sep­a­ratist move­ment killed 43 peo­ple in var­i­ous ran­dom attacks and bomb­ings through­out the coun­try.  For many peo­ple and in the media, they looked at this instant in Span­ish foot­ball as a micro­cosm of what was going on in the coun­try.  They were able to make a fig­u­ra­tive con­nec­tion between It was a time where sev­eral things would get con­fused with  play­mak­ers were being attacked in almost ¨ter­ror­ist¨ fash­ion.  The con­text was a bit dis­torted to a point where the game and national pol­i­tics of the time were con­fused.   Basque sep­a­rtist move­ment ETA claimed the lives of 43 peo­ple that year and the attack on Maradona was being looked at in the same light. As crazy as it seems now, it was very log­i­cal at the moment.  It was easy to make sense of all of this espe­cially when it was a Basque that caused this injury.  It fur­ther rein­forced the idea that the anti-football that the Basques played was ¨sep­a­rate¨ to what teams like Real Madrids and Barcelonas played.

Barcelona romped over Ath­letic Blibao by two goals and Andoni Goikoetxea looked for revenge against the blau­grana after Bernd Schus­ter came after the Basque hard­man.  Barça went up 3–0 and things looked secure for the culés.  So when things  Unfor­tu­nately, the young Argen­tine star would be caught in the cross­fire.  Maradona would tell the Bil­bao hard­man to calm down, and the lat­ter would take offense to El Pibe´s com­ment.   Goiko knew that some­thing had to be done in order to get back at Schus­ter for a pre­vi­ous chal­lenge that the Ger­man inter­na­tional gave him.  Maradona´s com­ment changed the tar­get.  He saw the Argen­tine star run­ning towards a ball and Goikoetxea sim­ply went after Maradona´s ankle.  He would end up with vir­tu­ally a state of shock after all three main ankle lig­a­ments were torn medial malle­o­lus was fractured.

The Argen­tine inter­na­tional would be out for four months.   Bil­bao would even­tu­ally win their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive league title and would face off against Maradona´s side at the San­ti­ago Bern­abéu for the final of the Copa del Rey and the Basque´s would come out on top to earn their domes­tic dou­ble.   Despite the result the game was marred by one of the most vio­lent post-game brawls in his­tory. That would be the last time El Diego would ever wear the blau­grana jer­sey.  He would later make a move to lit­tle known Ital­ian side Napoli and help them become one of the biggest sides in Europe dur­ing the late 80´s and early 90´s.

In an arti­cle writ­ten this past Mon­day by Span­ish daily El País, the inci­dent was  revis­ited.    In the arti­cle, they talk to  Goikoetxea about the entire inci­dent now.  Many play­ers through­out the years called it ¨hard but uncal­cu­lated¨.  Goikoetxea said in the inter­view that he never meant to hurt the Argen­tine star and asked for apolo­gies.  To this date, his apol­ogy was not accept, but it was answered– unfor­tu­nately not the way the Bil­bao cen­ter back wanted it to be.   Goikoetxea´s cause was not helped very much when then club pres­i­dent Pedro Aurtenetxe came out and said, ¨I can´t be held respon­si­ble for what hap­pens if Maradona keeps talk­ing.¨  Then after the brawl Maradona men­tioned that Bil­bao were after him and that Goikoetxea want to ¨fin­ish what he started.¨

Goikoetxea´s legacy will for­ever be etched in foot­ball for the wrong rea­sons.  In 2007, he was given the dubi­ous by Eng­lish news­pa­per The Times dis­tinc­tion of being ¨awarded¨ the most vio­lent foot­ball in his­tory and thus became the poster­child for Basque ter­ror­ism in football.

Whether you come from the camp that believe that is the case or not is irrel­e­vant.  You can see that the sport has evolved in some aspects and regressed in oth­ers.  Goikoetxea´s foul would have been (nine times out of 10) a direct red card and a sus­pen­sion.   He only received a yel­low, although the dis­ci­pli­nary board gave him an 18-match suspension.

The dis­plea­sure was obvi­ous when peo­ple saw Goikoetxea was cheered by the Bil­bao faith­ful in their next home match as the Baque faith­ful thought that the sus­pen­sion given to the Span­ish inter­na­tional was exces­sive. Goiko would score a goal and would help Bil­bao win a cru­cial Euro­pean Cup match against Lech Poz­nan. He would then be taken off the field on the shoul­ders of his team­mates and to the crown chant­ing his name. This is why he did some­thing that seems con­tro­ver­sial to many. A man  seems more like a hunter when he places the  boots that he only wore twice in a glass case. Those boots were the same ones that he was just break­ing in when he broke Diego Maradona´s ankle.  To many it´s a encas­ing a weapon.  To Goikoetxea it´s a reminder.

¨I hope I am not mis­in­ter­preted.  I don´t want peo­ple to think that I did this I did this is in order to sym­bol­ize the two sides of the game. The time after I was being harassed after injur­ing (Maradona) and then the sup­port I got from the Bil­bao fans afterwards.¨

Wow, the more things change.  The more things stay the same.