The small village of miracles where the best football players of the moment played

BarcelonaOn July 25, 1975, Ladislau Kubala walked onto a football pitch at the head of a group of footballers. They were not unknown footballers, those men. They were the best of the Spanish league at the time, many of them destined to play in the Argentina World Cup a few years later under Ladislau, who was then the national team coach. That was no ordinary match. To begin with, the pitch where these stars would play was sand. The audience was also different. No luxury and no giant stands. It was all the people of Sarral, a town in the Conca de Barbera with fewer than two thousand inhabitants, surrounded by fields of vineyards and olive trees.

“In Sarral we saw incredible things, as if it were a miracle”, says Albert Esteller, a resident of the town who is in charge of recovering this surprising story. How did players who shone at Barça, Athletic, or Valencia end up on a dirt pitch? The key was a man about whom not all the details are yet known. “There was a neighbor of the town, named Antón Miró Ricard, who had a connection with Kubala. They were close friends. Miró was a farmer's son who went to Barcelona to make his fortune, as many people did. And he did. He had a good relationship with Barça executives and met Kubala, so the former player began to spend days in Sarral, where Miró lent him an apartment from a development he himself had built. The children of the time would go down to the football pitch and find Kubala training alone, running with his dog. And the Hungarian would explain to them how to kick the ball”, he explains. In Sarral, Kubala felt good. So much so that a tribute was organized for him there in 1975.

Esteller rediscovered history almost by chance. “I was looking for information about the Quintos de Sarral, which is an iconic festival. And I went to Manel Moles’s house, a man who had been secretary at the Town Hall and had a lot of information. And there I found documents that spoke of football matches from 100 years ago. The initial idea was this, to do a project on the 100 years of football in Sarral. And images of a Spanish national team match from that era appeared, with its star players like Rexach, in the town. It’s a unique case, seeing a national team playing in such a small town,” he explains. And by asking and searching, he saw that it wasn’t just that one match led by Kubala. For almost 15 years, many personalities from Catalan football and sports passed through the town.

“In 1969 Salvador Sadurní came and then Eladio, a very important Barcelona player. Club directors also came. And the Catalan national team of the time, the Barcelona veterans, the national roller hockey team... everyone passed through Sarral. The president of the Catalan Football Federation, Pablo Porta, used to come before being elected president of the Spanish one,” says a man who has been determined to try to organize new sporting events to remember that era, but in a different way. Now he wants Sarral to be able to see matches with good teams in order to raise awareness of Huntington’s disease, which his mother suffered from, a rare disease. “It is a rare disease. We could explain it by saying that it is a sum of three more diseases: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and ALS. It has a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years from diagnosis,” he says. In order to seek funds and raise awareness, he has made noise on social media this May, a month dedicated to this disease. “If we brought the best players then, we must aspire to do it again. I am looking for people to help me to make it big and help for a good cause,” he says.

Of those matches played half a century ago, the most surprising was on July 25, 1975. Francoism was then dying. And the rumor spread through the town that Kubala “wanted to play one more match, even though he had retired years before”, explains Esteller. Miró's complicity with the former player created the idea of bringing that era's selection to Sarral. “Players like Iribar, Quini, Migueli, Rexach, Asensi, and who would later become president of the Federation, Miguel Ángel Villar, came”, recalls Esteller. Only the Real Madrid players were missing, as their then-president, Santiago Bernabéu, was convinced the match wouldn't happen and didn't give them permission. “He ended up personally apologizing to Kubala with a telegram when he saw that the match was indeed being played and the players from other teams were attending”, says Esteller. Naturally, that day people from many towns in the area gathered to see the footballers in action, who faced each other without their official uniforms. In fact, they played 10 against 10, with green and yellow jerseys, playing 30 minutes per half. It was a different match to remember Kubala. "People who lived it remember many anecdotes. It was a special day for the people, who got to meet their idols. That's the power of football. It would be nice to repeat it", concludes Esteller.