Joan Garcia's tribute to Zamora, Barcelona's first turncoat goalkeeper

BarcelonaA century later, in the streets and bars of Barcelona, people are once again talking about a goalkeeper who changes sides. The signing of Joan Garcia, who will leave Espanyol to wear the blue and red jersey, has hurt the feelings of the blue and white fans and inflamed those of Barcelona fans, just as Ricardo Zamora did 100 years ago. Only time will tell if the goalkeeper from Sallent will become as famous as the eternal Zamora, one of the best goalkeepers of all time. And a man who shook the city not just once, but twice, on both occasions.

Born in 1901 in the Eixample district, Zamora was part of the first golden generation of Catalan football, along with his friend Josep Samitier. It was that city of revolutions and dreams, where improvised dirt football pitches were built on the vacant lots at the foot of the Sagrada Família or the buildings of the Eixample district to make room for a new sport that was constantly gaining followers. Little is known about Zamora's father, and for years it was unclear whether a doctor from Cádiz was his father or his stepfather. It was, in the end, the stepfather, since his father was not there when Ricardo was born to a Valencian mother. The stepfather was convinced that his son should be a doctor. What was his desire to be an athlete all about? The young man's childhood was marked by that tension. With a neighbor from the neighborhood, Francesc Armet, he would spend hours playing on a vacant lot near Ronda Universidad, where he wanted to be a striker.

Zamora attended the Piarist school, where a priest who was also a football fan helped him train and took him to see the training sessions of Universitario, a powerful club of the time. The young Zamora watched them fascinated and used to pick up balls behind the goal, until one day they asked him if he wanted to play between the posts. He impressed so much that at 13, they called him up for a friendly in which he conceded four goals from the start, nervous as he was. Then they gave him a glass of cognac and he began to improve. So much so that a year later Espanyol called him up. The blue and white team was scheduled to play a match in Madrid against Real Madrid and had lost their goalkeeper, Pere Gisbert, to injury. So they asked Universitario if the young Zamora could play with them. The club agreed, but the goalkeeper's parents were the hardest to convince. They achieved it, and at just 15 years old, he made his debut on April 22, 1916, against Real Madrid, where a certain Santiago Bernabéu played. The future Real Madrid president would score the Madrid goal in a 1-1 draw at the now-defunct O'Donnell stadium in Madrid, where the young Zamora had impressed. "A kid named Ricardo Zamora made his debut, stopping every ball, in every style there has been and ever will be, as easily as drinking a glass of water," the press reported.

But his stepfather was still angry. He didn't like seeing him jumping and coming home sweaty. Zamora was becoming famous. That turtleneck sweater to keep warm, the cap, and the Zamora style—the way he kicked balls with his elbow—made him an icon. But his father didn't stop until he made him keep a promise he'd wrung from him one day: he would study medicine. In 1919, after three brilliant years at Espanyol, Zamora retired at the age of 18. But his passion for football didn't fade, so Ricardo would go out on weekends with some friends to play friendly matches. Many of those friends were members of Barça, which already had several amateur teams at the time. The club's directors, upon learning that Zamora was spending time with club members, didn't think twice. They went looking for him and offered him an unprecedented fee to sign for them and return to playing. And Zamora accepted.

The story of a betrayal

When the news broke, Espanyol felt betrayed. Had Zamora left them to study and less than a year later signed for their rival? The debates surrounding the signing filled newspaper columns and provoked the odd brawl. At Barça, Zamora coincided with legends like Paulino Alcántara and his friend and partner in nightlife Josep Samitier, right at the time when Catalan football was coming of age. Zamora and Samitier were already as famous as singers, bullfighters, or actors. Ricardo would play for Barça for three years, during which time he would score the only official goal ever scored by a Barça goalkeeper, on December 14, 1919, in a Catalan Championship match against Internacional, in which he asked for a penalty. And he scored in a 2-1 victory.

But Espanyol were deeply pained by the sight of Ricardo in his blue and red jersey. This was especially true after seeing Zamora excel as a goalkeeper for the Spanish national team, which shone at the 1920 Antwerp Olympic Games, where they won silver. The rivalry continued to grow in the 1920s, as both clubs sought land to build larger stadiums and attracted more and more players. In 1922, the De la Riva brothers, instrumental in the Sarrià revival, sought to bring the goalkeeper back and signed him that year for 25,000 pesetas, a very high figure at the time that generated a great deal of debate.

The press illustrated the case with Zamora being coveted by Joan Gamper's Barça, who didn't want to give him up but didn't want to pay too much either, and Espanyol. In fact, both clubs registered him at the same time in a debate that caused the goalkeeper to be sanctioned for a few weeks, since he had decided to return to being a blue and white player, as he made clear in a famous letter published in the newspaper Sporting Gazette in which he himself explained: "No, my friend, no. Zamora carefully considered his decision to return to the club of my childhood, and I feel at home there after a comfortable (?) trip abroad. I therefore deny everything that is being said around me, and I am certain that my footballing life will end at RCD Español, so I will fight today with more love than ever, to make people forget a mistake I made when I was young.". A letter that years later he would use before the Francoist authorities to be pardoned, because they had sanctioned him for not having been sufficiently loyal to the national side despite having been imprisoned by the Republicans, explaining that he had referred to Barça as "trip abroad"in reference to the fact that the Barcelona club was flirting with a"separatism" which bothered him. Zamora never made it clear whether he was right-wing or left-wing, but he certainly wasn't a Catalanist.

Zamora would be happy back at Espanyol, with whom he would win the 1929 Cup. He was so famous that that year he would star in the film Zamora finally gets marriedHowever, in 1930, Zamora left for Madrid for 100,000 pesetas, an astronomical sum for the time. He failed to keep the promise of his famous letter in which he said he would retire to Sarrià. While playing for Real Madrid, he would win two league titles and two cups. He played for Real Madrid until the start of the war, when, after being imprisoned by the Republicans, he fled to France with his friend Josep Samitier.

Between Zamora and Joan Garcia, by the way, other goalkeepers have also changed teams in Barcelona, ​​​​such as Cristòfol Solà, who in 1930 would move from Espanyol to Barça without much luck, or the Basque Javier Urrutikoetxea, the missed Urruti, perico from 1979 to 1981 and later a Barça player. The Basque also generated debates, but less tense than Zamora or a Joan Garcia who shows that, a century after the signing of the Divine, the rivalry is still alive.