SPAIN
Espanyol (1916-1919, 1922-1930)
Barcelona (1919-1922)
Real Madrid (1930-1936)
OGC Nice (1936-1938)
With his matinee idol good looks (Marca once referred to him being “as famous as Garbo, and better looking”) and Beckham-esque sense of style (he wore a cloth cap and a white polo-neck jumper, which he claimed protected him from the sun and from opposing players, to say nothing of the Fashion Police), “El Divino” is considered to be the first football superstar in Spanish history. He won five Copa Del Rey championships, five Catalan Club Championships (which existed before La Liga), and two La Liga titles. He wasn’t all style over substance, though. He was known for his toughness and bravery, frequently playing despite severe injuries. He is, perhaps, most famous for playing with a broken sternum against England, a match in which Spain became the first team from outside the British Isles to defeat England. He was a member of the very first Spanish international squad and won a silver medal at the 1920 Olympics. He was also the starting goalkeeper for the Spanish side that went all the way to the Quarterfinals in the 1934 World Cup. He was Spain’s most capped player for 38 years before being surpassed by José Ángel Iribar.
He was every bit as controversial as he was accomplished. Like Lev Yashin (see below), he enjoyed drinking and smoking, and was known to smoke up to three packs of cigarettes a day (good thing he didn’t play in the midfield). He was sent off in the 1920 Olympics for punching an Italian player, and was arrested on his way home from the Olympic games for trying to smuggle Cuban cigars into Spain. He tried to conceal part of his signing-on fee with Espanyol so that he wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it, and was suspended for a year.
Politically, he was one of the rare Spanish players of that era who found favor with both Nationalists and Republicans. He played for the Catalan National Team, but controversially transferred to Real Madrid, which was the preferred side of Francisco Franco, the Generalissimo who tried to suppress Catalan Nationalism upon becoming dictator of Spain. He was given a medal by the Republican government, which obviously didn’t take because he was later captured by the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War, and was rumored to have been killed. He managed to escape to France, where he played his last two years with OGC Nice before returning to Spain, where he received a medal from Franco.
Despite his shifting political allegiances, he is still revered in Spanish football. The award for outstanding goalkeeper in La Liga is named the Ricardo Zamora Trophy.
