“Arsenio, what?” The total question was invented in A Coruña and Arsenio answered it like no other who spouted his ideas from there. Or not. “What of what? Benito, what of what?” he replied in one of them to Benito Cores, the reporter from Television de Galicia, who followed the team as they tried to make the leap into the First Division. Retranca differs from irony in that one generates sympathy and the other tension. Arsenio liked to castle in the first. Of course he was more direct at times, for example denying the years-burgeoning legend that he scored against Ramallets in his first game with Deportivo and then apologized. The target was hit, although some chronicles of the time attribute it to another colleague, but the apology matter was already concerned that he would not crash. “I’m a villager, yes, but not a fool,” he explained. As early as 1951, the year of his Deportivo debut, it was said that his best quality was his dribbling.
On Friday night and in the rain, a long line of A Coruña sports fans lined up in front of the Riazor Stadium to pay their last respects to Arsenio Iglesias. The parade continued this Saturday morning, hours before Deportivo hosted Alcorcón in a crucial duel for promotion to the second division. The field will be packed: Tickets have been sold out for a few days. The fact that something like this happened at the worst football moment in the club’s history can only be understood from the contribution of personalities like Arsenio. The blue and white club, which has an image department and carefully updates its archives and historical memories, erected a mourning chapel in record time in the area leading from the dressing rooms to the pitch. On the Deportivo bench they wore several wreaths of flowers and a canvas with the image of the deceased Mythos and an indication of the place and year of his birth, “Arteixo, 1930”. Impossible to date the death of a legend.
“My father always said that he didn’t do enough to get it either, but he must have done something,” reflects Pablo, the youngest of his four children. Close by was Emilio Butragueño, who on the occasion was more than just head of Real Madrid’s institutional relations. He was a rival on the pitch and not under his command, having joined Mexico’s Atlético Celaya just months before Arsenio’s arrival in the White House. “His forgiving, humble and respectful manner very much embodies the great values of football,” he said. Talante has plenty of Real Club Celta, who was sent to Riazor, its president Carlos Mouriño, who had traveled abroad, all his staff, a deputy of former players and Kevin Vázquez, one of the team captains. It was then that the memory of the reverential respect that the heavenly fans had for the sports emblem arose.
The rosary of memories and anecdotes about Arsenio followed one another in the crowd. Essential to understand your figure. Even his son Pablo had recently been encouraged to reveal some of these in a special issue of Panenka Magazine, such as the surreal conversation at the gate of old Las Llanas Field with the family of a Basque soccer player he never fielded. “It’s like we’re many this year,” he apologized upon hearing the accusation. “Well, nothing, man, go ahead and get on,” said one of the Basques. And ascended. Other episodes feel apocryphal, like the one that tells of a bad moment in a game and a player asking what to do. “Ide cagar (Go shit),” the technician would have replied. “He says attack,” the footballer transferred to his teammates. You won the game.
But the best portrait of him was drawn by the journalist Xosé Hermida in Arsenio, the magician’s football. It is an essential work, released in September 1995, shortly after Deportivo won their first title in history, a Copa del Rey they won when the club had already presented John Toshack as his successor. “A defeat is more human,” said Arsenio, who was accused by his critics of being defensive in his approaches: “I’m maybe a conservative, what I’m not is ruthless,” he said.
There was a time when Riazor defeated Arsenio. By 1991, he was fed up with struggling for promotion in a context where the side could not strengthen themselves away from home and decided to leave the bench once his goal was achieved. It seemed to be the end. Even then, the new wave of fans arriving at the stadium had associated themselves with that gray-haired gentleman in whom they identified values such as nobility, prudence and retrance. And that he built solid teams that played football very well under the inalienable trademark of order and talent. Perhaps his greatest triumph at Deportivo was the turn from misunderstanding of that old bleachers sector to the affection of a new wave championed by some Riazor Blues forged in the late 1980s watching their teams play, and with a defining motto: ” We’re not ultras, we’re fun.” “No one knows how I feel about these kids, seeing them in front in Spain, shirtless, always behind the team…”. Some of them traveled to Riazor this Friday to pay their respects.
As a result, when the team contracted the flu in the first few months back to the First Division, they had to shed the tracksuit (just the top that used to be paired with Tergal pants) and focus on an agonizing climb up the Betis field. It was there that he finally embraced Uruguayan centre-back Martín Lasarte in a memorable conversation that was captured by a camera located at the foot of the field. “What a pleasure, Martin, what a pleasure. How much have I suffered, my God. I thought I was dying, my God!” he exclaimed. “How much I suffered, Martín” is the motto of several generations of athletes, the portrait of a hobby, almost a way of life. “You have to know how to look back, be careful, know where you’re coming from,” Arsenio explained.
It was unique in that everyone who paraded in the Riazor to say goodbye to Arsenio agreed. He insisted his middle name was Pardo, “not Pardillo.” When he first started playing soccer, he liked Panizo and Zarra, but eventually gave in to Fran, Bebeto and Mauro Silva, whom he described as the best soccer players he had coached. Almost thirty years ago, a journalist from Madrid was looking for this answer in the Riazor press room. The man asked him if this Deportivo was the best team he had ever coached. Arsenio was perfectly clear: “Maybe yes, maybe no.”
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