Two ancient balloons appear and their faces light up. The ball rejuvenates them. They are Carles Rexach (77), Juan Manuel Asensi (74) and Pere Valentí Mora (76). La Vanguardia brings them together in the Barça Players Association on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 0-5 Barcelona win at the Bernabéu, which will be held next Saturday. The conversation flows without ceasing, between laughter, anecdotes and the odd dart.
The first memory that comes to mind of the game...
MORA: The satisfaction I felt when I finished was like floating. I could mentally move to my town (Vilaplana, Tarragona) and know how they were.
ASENSI: What comes to mind because it caught my attention was that when the game ended the Bernabéu audience was applauding us. We gave them a bath and they applauded us. It was a recognition.
REXACH: On the other hand, what I remember is that during the game there were long periods of silence. We silence the Bernabéu. Not a fly could be heard.
That silence is famous…
MORA: Two things happened. There were people who left earlier and others who admired our football and recognized us.
ASENSI: When we scored the third goal, the public's morale dropped. They already thought there was nothing to scratch.
MORA: We were great, it was Cruyff's first season, but it wasn't just Cruyff...
ASENSI: We were a great team.
MORA: If Cruyff had been put in a more vulgar team he wouldn't have looked as good either. He had very important people around him. Before playing we didn't think we were going to win easily.
ASENSI: But we had one certainty. We told ourselves that if we won at Madrid's field we would be champions even if there was still the League. Because we got rid of them. We won and were eleven points ahead.
Is it the most important game of your career?
MORA: There have also been other important ones. But it has marked us because it is a spectacular result. I debuted that day. It was a ballot.
ASENSI: It was very important because it encouraged us to win the League after 14 years and that is why everything was celebrated twice as much. I scored two goals.
REXACH: The importance of the matches is given by the public. It is the memory of the people, who remind you of the game, which makes it even more important. There are games that remain in history. Those who give him names and surnames are the fans.
ASENSI: You're right, Charly. 50 years later we are still talking about that game. See if it is a match that has made history.
REXACH: We are the same, we could play tomorrow.
ASENSI: Yes, to the domino (laughs).
But the beginning was not easy...
ASENSI: We had a bad time the first 10 minutes.
MORA: Yes, yes. Amancio had a good chance that he finished over me. But we played safely. At 25 years old, I was getting over my head and I was able to make my debut. I played four games in a row due to Sadurní's injury. We didn't lose. I made merits to continue but I couldn't take away Sadurní, who had made merits all year. I accepted it with sportsmanship.
ASENSI: That's what you say, Pere. The group was impeccable. There was camaraderie. We had Flaco (Cruyff) who was the leader but the team was very complete.
Five players scored more than 10 goals that season.
REXACH: That guaranteed you 50 goals between Marcial, Sotil, Asensi, Cruyff and me.
ASENSI: There was a foul and there were slaps to throw it away. There was Charly, Flaco (Cruyff), Cholo (Sotil), Marcial, who hit him with both legs. Now I look at the current Barça and say “there is no one who is a specialist.” The same thing happened in the penalties, although in the penalties the number one was Charly.
REXACH: Marcial and Cruyff didn't like taking penalties that much.
ASENSI: The center of the field was Marcial, Juan Carlos and me. Juan Carlos and I had assumed that the leader of the area was Rubio (Marcial), the one who organized us. He knew where he had to put it for Charly and I already knew that he had to run to the far post. There were automatisms.
From the time of Cruyff and Rexach as coaches, the Wembley phrase of “go out and enjoy” remained. On the other hand, with Rinus Michels, the coach of that time, we don't know if it was too much to say “go out and enjoy”…
REXACH: When a coach was hired, the first thing the board looked for was that he had bad temper. One was Mr. Marble, the other was Mr. Whip, the other was the Tiger, which was Roque Olsen. Olsen snapped at you: “You, what the hell is he doing with his hands on his hips?” Michels was not about going out and enjoying himself because he never enjoyed it, he was more about “going out and winning, however you want, but winning.” When he spoke he was already aggressive.
ASENSI: It was his character. You would pass him on the street and he was the same.
MORA: The coaches had a lot of authority, you couldn't even laugh (laughs).
Jordi Cruyff was born eight days before the game. Did you ever fear that Johan would be distracted?
ASENSI: No, because he didn't miss training.
MORA: He was focused. We started the season as always, with irregular results...Until Cruyff made his debut against Granada and everything started to work. We respected Cruyff because we saw that with him we won, we were super happy but he didn't play alone.
REXACH: When Cruyff arrived, unusual expectations were generated. When we went to Gijón the first year, if a defender made a tackle, the public would scold their player because they wanted to see Cruyff. The second year, however, if they kicked him, they told him: “Give him another one” (laughs). That's why from the second year onwards we swept at home and lost 1-0 away.
In the final days of the Franco regime, winning in Madrid had a very particular significance. Did you notice that extra-sports responsibility?
MORA: A lot of importance was given to this. But if we wanted to beat Madrid it was because it was the rival to beat and we wanted to finish the League.
REXACH: Plus, we had played with Franco all our lives. Of course, you were going to play in Vigo or A Coruña and the people were first from Madrid and then from their city team and when they played against Madrid they wanted them to win. The opposite happened with us.
MORA: The referees were Madridistas because three quarters of Spain were Madridistas.
Did they charge a special bonus for winning at the Bernabéu?
MORA: Yes, yes. President Montal paid us double bonus. If they paid us 50,000 pesetas for winning away, for winning at the Bernabéu we earned 100,000.
After 0-5 they return to the hotel and Joan Manuel Serrat appears. Did he sing any songs to them?
REXACH: That time he didn't sing, but some time ago, before Michels was the coach, he had come to some preseason. He would go running with us and some nights he would play us songs.
MORA: I was there because I had a concert. That day I met him. The celebration was dinner and cava. It was nothing out of this world. Since there were no cell phones…I had not even called my family telling them that I was going to be the starter.
And when they arrive the next day in Barcelona...
MORA: That was nice, the reception. It was tremendous, all the people surrounding the bus and the road full of cars accompanying us.
ASENSI: Ours is simple, celebrating it as a group at the hotel.
Anyone would party with Rinus Michels.
REXACH: So that you can see how far his power reached. He had a tower in El Montanyà and so did I. We were prohibited from riding a motorcycle and one day we were out there on the motorcycle and suddenly Michels appeared as if he were a ghost. “But what are you doing?”
ASENSI: The internal regime book said that we could not go by motorcycle, horse or bicycle. Marcial had a motorcycle accident and told the masseuse Àngel Mur that he had fallen in the shower.
REXACH: Like Carlos Busquets when he said that he had burned himself with an iron and also went on a motorcycle (laughs).
When Piqué scored the sixth goal at the Bernabéu in 2009, did you think that they would no longer be called upon?
MORA: No, because Madrid scored two and two is not zero. The nice thing is the 0 and the 5.
REXACH: There are three spectacular results with Madrid because of what they were supposed to be. The 0-5 in 1974, because of the time and because it was on their field, the 2-6 in 2009 with great football and the 5-0 in 1994, that of Romário's cow's tail.
