History of the Spain National Team (I): the birth of a dream
The first chapter of this History of the Spanish National Team launched by RFEF.es takes us back to the years of pioneers and brave people, a touch of madness, and contributors who sought to make their way in a new sport which was slowly but surely converting the masses and growing in popularity.
The birth of the national team (July-August 1920) and its debut match in an international tournament at the Antwerp Olympic Games (August-September) show that the 1920 Olympic Games marked a before and after moment in the history of Spanish football and, of course, for the national team. They forged their own style and philosophy of play (the "furia" or fury), they made "balompié" (football) the favourite sport of the fans of the time and they mark the starting point for the modernisation of football at the time, which would come to be characterised as the end of amateurism, the consolidation of professionalism and the transformation of football into a mass supporter spectacle followed more and more widely by the media of the time, especially the radio and the written press.
Stemming from the Antwerp Olympics, the first thing that emerged for the Spanish national team was a "founding myth" ("the Spanish fury") and, as a consequence of this myth, an identity, a way of understanding the "Spanish" way of playing football. A "founding myth", the source of a singular and different identity which displayed a new footballing idiosyncrasy of its own.
Antwerp was important for the construction of this myth, not only because of what was achieved, the Olympic silver medal, but also because of how it was achieved: with an outpouring of personal and collective effort, overcoming, through dedication, numerous obstacles along the way and putting on a display of sacrifice in the most adverse of contexts. The adventure ended with a, according to the press at the time, "glorious" silver medal, which the Spaniards won after five passionate matches, with high doses of drama and played on the edge of the impossible by a team with little cohesion beyond the few training matches previously played in Spain. This lack of cohesion was compensated for by fielding technically gifted players such as Pichichi, Patricio, Belauste, Pagaza, Samitier and, above all, Ricardo Zamora.
Arrive as footballers, leave as heroes
Between the end of August 1920 and the beginning of September, a handful of young players (such as Samitier, who was 18, and Ricardo Zamora, aged 19) faced their first playing experience abroad, playing in a tournament of the highest level and reputation, such as the Olympic Games. They arrived there as footballers and left as modern heroes. In fact, this is exactly how they were received upon their return to Spain and, in the years that followed, they were always surrounded by an air of success.
In those Olympic Games, the Spanish players managed to beat teams that came with the favourites tag, such as Denmark, who were defeated in the first ever match played by the national team - on 28 August 1920. The national team won 1-0, thanks to a goal by Patricio Arabolaza (the team's first ever goal scorer) and a memorable performance by Ricardo Zamora, who kept a clean sheet. In fact, it was his performance that gave rise to the famous phrase "1-0 and Zamora in goal".
After losing 3-1 to Belgium, the match against Sweden was vital to keeping their medal hopes alive. And against all the odds, the Spaniards managed to beat the Swedes thanks to a heroic breakaway goal in which the giant Belauste (1.93m) called for the ball from team-mate Sabino ("Hang it up for me!") and headed the ball home - crashing the ball, and two Swedes along the way - into the net. The final score ended up 2-1, which allowed the Spaniards to keep dreaming of a medal. As late as 1948, the newspaper Marca devoted four day’s papers to the events of the 1920s, interviewing Pagaza, one of those stars at length:
"(We won) but our work cost us. That was a real battle... Spain... it was a barrage. We threw ourselves with all we had. There was no force that could hold us back... the winning goal was epic. Belauste scored it but the whole team was pushing on for it.
The birth of the Spanish Fury
The birth of the national team at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920 was therefore linked to the concept of "Fury", transformed into a legend that explained and legitimised an identity. And Belauste's goal, in particular, became an iconic image of that identity, the embodiment of that myth and of that way of understanding football.
According to the journalist Manolo de Castro, the adjective "fury" to designate the idea of the Spain’s courage was created by another journalist, in this case a Dutchman. De Castro himself, also known by his nickname "Handicap", told the story:
"H. Hollander, editor of De Telegraaf in Amsterdam, spoke to me about the luck of the Belgian team and praised the Spanish technique and, above all, the admirable and useful fury of the Spaniards. Oh, the fury of the Spaniards! It was the ghost of Olympic football.”
The journalists covering those Games watching the Spanish team had no hesitation in creating such a label: thus the term "Spanish Fury" was born, paying reference to the sacking of Antwerp by the troops of Felipe II in 1576... It was only logical that a journalist from the Netherlands was the creatorbof the concept of Spanish fury by passing an image from Dutch historical imagination rooted in their fight against Habsburg Spain in the 16th century to the football field.
Final lost, glory won
Then, those players, from that moment onwards were elevated to the category of heroes, beating Italy (2-0) and the Netherlands (3-1), thus rounding off the feat by taking the silver medal back home to Spain. Spain played against the Netherlands in the final for second place and thus the silver medal. The final for first place was played between Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The Belgians won the gold medal.
The match against the Trans-Alpine rivals was decisive because it was a play-off with the hope of of staying alive in the tournament at stake: they had to win or give up hopes of the medal. Two players became the stars of the moment. Félix Sesúmaga, thanks to his two goals, and Silverio Izaguirre, Real Sociedad's left winger, who with a 2-0 lead had to take over as goalkeeper because Ricardo Zamora was sent off with 15 minutes to go after committing a foul.
Mundo Deportivo journalist, Ignacio Galea, recounted shortly afterwards how it all happened:
“Who knows how to play with the ball at their feet? Who wants to be goalkeeper, who is to be put in goal?" The players ask each other, while some of them had harsh words for the recently sent off Zamora. A player comes running up: Me, I'll be the goalkeeper, and stripping off his red shirt, he exchanges it for Zamora's dark one. It's Silverio, the left winger... Spain's defence was great, orderly, methodical and they stood firm, they marked every opponent closely and did not shy away from their defensive duties".
At first Zamora stood by Silverio's side advising him on what he should do and how he should act in his new role as goalkeeper until the player turned to the goalkeeper and asked him to stop distracting him. In the end, the scoreline remained unchanged.
The culmination of the feat came with the silver medal win 3-1 over the Netherlands, with two goals from Sesúmaga and one from Pichichi.
On their return to Spain, these "footballers", now considered not only heroes but symbols of Spanish identity, received a tremendous welcome: in San Sebastián they held an exhibition match in the presence of King Alfonso XIII, who personally congratulated the players.
The whole country’s style
Antwerp was the baptism of the "fury narrative" which later, from 1924, would begin to coexist with another type of narrative: that of failure and defeatism. What seemed evident in the mid-1920s was that the fans and a significant part of the football media identified with this national team style because it was a way of understanding football that was linked to the very history of Spain and the idea of nation (and of how Spaniards were or what they should be like). A national "myth" and a collective identity linked to a sense of belonging had been born around the national team.
A reflection in the newspaper La Jornada Deportiva is very enlightening in this sense, on how the press promoted the concept of "fury" in society:
"Some will call it "courage", like the French. Others will call it 'flight', like the Italians. But the way the Spanish national team play is something else. It is something that is in the blood of all of us, and which we certainly don't know how to explain. It is, perhaps, a gift of the race, unique, capable of leading us to the greatest victories and of creating, within football, a new way of playing, a conception different from all the others in Europe".