On the first anniversary of Lorenzo Sanz’s death from coronavirus, my friend the author Ignacio Peyro pays tribute as a football fan and a gourmet, to the man who served as president of Real Madrid from 1995 until 2000.
As Peyro posts with his characteristic humorous lyricism on his Instagram account, Sanz in his heathy days always had the physical exuberance of someone had just emerged from an extremely good meal of Spanish sea food.
My own memories of Sanz, which I describe in my book When Beckham went to Spain, focus on the high point of his presidency on 24 May 1998 when Real Madrid beat Juventus in the final of the Champion’s League, lifting the European championship crown for the first time in thirty-five years.
As a new century approached, the victory at the new Amsterdam Arena, watched by millions worldwide, marked a convergence between the club’s mythical past and the modern era of football, reinforcing the club’s self-belief that its greatness had no end.
As the late Catalan author Manuel Vazquez Montalban once put it (no Real Madrid fan!) wrote once: ‘Europe has always signified for Real Madrid and its fans either a distraction or an escape into the future. For the myth of Real Madrid-the winner of six European cups-the conquest of the seventh had become an indispensable condition for affirming an identity that had always revolved around domination.’
The 1998 final was edge of the seat stuff. It was Serbian Pedrag Mijatavic’s goal in the 66th minute which secured victory over Juventus that entered the history books as a defining moment, even though the game continued to a nail-biting finish as the Italian club, then captained by Zidane, rallied and tried to equalize.
Three minutes from the final, Lorenzo Sanz couldn’t stand the tension any longer and left the directors’ box, excusing himself on the grounds that he had to go to the bathroom. He spent the final moments huddled in a corner of an internal room of the stadium, clutching a live radio commentary to his ear.
As Sanz told me later: ‘I just felt stricken by fear, with emotion-we were so close to winning and yet I knew that the whole illusion of victory could collapse in an instant. I couldn’t deal with the tension of it in front all the VIP’s so I got out, ‘he recalled.
The next day Sanz took up the rear of the triumphant cavalcade along Madrid’s Castellana Avenue with his commanders, the German coach Jupp Yeynckes and team captain Manolo Sanchis who was among the players who climbed onto the Cibeles statue.
As Sanchis told me: ‘It seemed to me appropriate that we should be there at that statue which signifies a great sense of victory of the city of Madrid over Europe and the rest of the world. The happiness everyone felt was that of fulfilling a thirty-two-year old wish.’
Everyone that is except Barca fans who had been wearing Juventus shirts and went into mourning.Hala Madrid!
