2023-04-20 14:46:53
BarcelonaIt all started at a major village festival, like so many beautiful stories. Josep Maria Fusté (Linyola, 1941 – Barcelona, 2023) played for the team of his hometown, surrounded by friends. They had made a good team and together they had managed to win a championship ahead of the team from Lleida capital. And it was then that a Barça technician who was touring the towns arrived in Linyola to see those dwarfs in action. That talent hunter was Josep Boter, who noticed that boy with a mischievous face who had a goal. A few months later, he proposed to three young people from Linyola to go live in Barcelona. One of them was Josep Maria, the only one who would set foot in the Camp Nou.
Barça announced this Thursday the death of the “boy from Linyola”, one of Barça’s most charismatic players during the 1960s. A few days after seeing the retirement of Bojan Krkic, the other great player born in Linyola, this town of Pla d’Urgell dismissed its first great hero: a midfielder who arrived at Barça when he was 12 years old wearing football boots and a handful of textbooks in his bag and he went to live with other boys from the middle of Catalonia in the flats of Barcelona’s Raval where the future stars of Barça were then staying and ate in restaurants as if it were a boarding house. Fusté, who would always remain linked to Barça, remembered it in detail when years later he spoke to the young people who were already living in modern flats in La Masia.
A touch midfielder who was defined as “someone who knew how to move the ball”, he went through the lower categories of the club and played for the famous Condal, the subsidiary that a few years earlier, in 1956, had managed to play a year in Primera. In 1959, Fusté would be proclaimed youth champion of Spain, with a team whose goalkeeper was Sadurní, after defeating Sevilla in the final despite both the first and second legs ending in a draw. The title would end up in the hands of Barça thanks to a curious rule: in the event of a tie, the team with the youngest players won. For a few days, this was the Catalan club. Before succeeding in the Blaugrana first team, Fusté was loaned to Osasuna from 1960 to 1962, as he had to do military service in Pamplona (Navarra). Those were other times, when a football club could receive the reinforcement of a good player if he ended up assigned to a military barracks in the area.
Josep Maria had made his debut just before with the Blaugrana first team. It was Christmas Day 1959, in a friendly against the Stade Français in Paris. He was 17 years old when, on December 24th, he received a call from Helenio Herrera, the Argentinian manager of Barça, at the Fusté de Linyola home, who asked that the boy return to Barcelona immediately, as he wanted him to play against the french people So, Fusté went to Missa del Gall and early the next day he got into a taxi that took him to Barcelona, where he would play that friendly at the Camp Nou. Barça won 5-0 and he scored two goals. A few days later, on King’s Day, he would score again in one of those friendlies that were held on festive dates to fill the club’s pockets.
In Pamplona, under the orders of the Catalan Miquel Gual, Fusté would play in the middle of the field, dropped to the left side, where he became a key piece in Navarre’s promotion to the top. He was ready to win at Barça. The problem would be that fortune would not accompany him at all. The two years that he then spent in Navarre doing the mili left him unable to be part of a large batch of Blaugrana players, the one that would reach the final of the European Cup for the first time in the 1960/61 season , which lost in Switzerland against Benfica. When he returned to Barça, Fusté found a team that had lost its references. Luis Suárez had left for Inter, as money was needed to pay for the new stadium. Kubala became the coach and the other Hungarians grew up. It would be a transitional Barça that would go 14 years without winning the League. In fact, Fusté would never win one. He was a hero in a difficult period, living in the shadow of Madrid. When the Linyola player left Barça in the 1971-72 season, his record included three Spanish Cups (1962/63, 1967/68 and 1970/71) and one Fairs Cup (1965/66), and a total of 406 games played and 117 goals scored.
The World Cup and the Beatles
It would be precisely Kubala who would make Fusté play as a midfielder in 1962, although the leap forward would not come until the 1963/64 season, when he took ownership of the team. The fans said then that “if Fusté plays, Barça wins”. His talent would also allow him to be called up for the Spanish team, with whom he would achieve his great title, the 1964 European Championship in Madrid with Marcelino’s goal against the Soviets. The Catalan midfielder would also play in the 1966 World Cup, with less luck. “Look, it was a good team, but, for example, Del Sol, who was winning in Italy, didn’t come. There was an argument with the coach. I shared a room with Iribar, who wasn’t much of a talker, but we got along friends. Now, the concentration lasted for so many days that we were very bored. Two years before, with barely 10 days of preparation, the Euro was won. In contrast, in 1966, so many weeks of preparation for nothing.” remembered Fusté in the ARA a few years ago. Spain made their debut losing to Argentina and then defeated Switzerland, so to qualify they had to play Germany all the way. This was the only game that Fusté played, and in fact he scored the Spanish goal. “They beat the Germans 2-1, without being better.” From those days in England, Fusté remembers the madness for the Beatles. But the players were not allowed to leave the concentration much; in part, for fear of anti-Franco youth demonstrations.
Having become a player much loved by the suffering Blaugrana fans, Fusté would live his great night of glory in the Recopa of 1969, when he led with three goals a thrashing against German Cologne. In the final, however, Slovan de Bratislava would defeat Barça by 3 to 2. The 1970/71 season gradually lost its title with the arrival of the Dutchman Rinus Michels, in a very complicated season, since when it seemed that for finally winning the League, Barça fell to Córdova, who had already been relegated, and bid farewell to the possibility of being champions.
Fusté would retire in 1972, when the Barcelona club dedicated a tribute match to him on August 30, although he later played for Hércules de Alicante for one more season, until 1974, in a short return to say goodbye to the playing fields. After retiring, he was in charge of the Veterans Association between 1976 and 1989, the year in which he was a pre-candidate in the Barça presidential elections. Since 2010, he has been an advisor to the Barcelona board of directors.
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