2023-11-26 14:44:12
BarcelonaTerry Venables, coach of Barça from 1984 to 1987, died today in London. He was 80 years old. The English coach was one step away from touching the sky with Barça in the famous final of the European Cup in Seville against Steaua, when penalties and goalkeeper Helmuth Duckadam they left the Catalan team one step away from glory. With a great sense of British humor, Venables succeeded at different English clubs after his time in Barcelona.
As a footballer he defended the shirt of clubs such as Chelsea FC, where he trained as a footballer, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Queens Park Rangers FC or Crystal Palace FC, of which he was also a coach. The son of a British naval officer, he had a good time at Chelsea, where he fell in with a group of players famous for following the fashions of the London era, shopping for clothes in the neighboring King’s Road and following musical tastes 1960s. Twice international with England, retired at Crystal Palace.
As a technician he stood out at Queen’s Park Rangers, a club with which he achieved promotion to the English first division and reached a cup final. His football allowed him to be recommended by Bobby Robson to the president of Barça, Josep Lluís Núñez, to start the post-Maradona era. In fact, when Venables arrived in Barcelona, he did not know that the Argentine would leave. “On the first day they already told me that Maradona had to be sold, that he was suffering from injuries and needed money. So he left, when I was enthusiastic about the idea of working with him” he would remember years later. From the start he opted for a British game that generated debates in Barcelona, where not everyone saw with good eyes a classic 4-4-2 in which the defensive line stood out with men like Gerardo, Migueli and Julio Alberto and a midfield very hardworking with a prominent figure, the German Bernd Schuster. As the icing on the cake, a striker arrived, the Scottish Steve Archibald, prioritized ahead of the Mexican Hugo Sánchez. “When I arrived people had little expectations. I was walking down the street and people told me that if we managed to defeat Madrid, they would be happy,” he recalled. And already on the first day, Barça scored 0-3 at the Santiago Bernabéu, with a goal from Archibald, one from Calderé and one in the Madrid players’ own goal. The team would no longer leave the first position of the classification.
Venables won the league title in 1984/85 at Valladolid, ending a decade-long drought, with Urruti saving a key penalty in that game. A milestone immortalized by Joaquim Maria Puyal with his famous “T’estimo Urruti”, of course. Archibald scored 14 goals that season, but in time people would question why he had not wanted to sign Hugo Sánchez. The Englishman bet on players who understood his game, promoting a style where it was necessary to press high to defend better. In addition, he did not close the door to La Masia players, earning the affection of the fans and a curious nickname: “The Tel“, a word created by his players joking with his way of trying to speak Spanish.
The following season he managed to get the team to the final of the 1986 European Cup, in Seville, after well-remembered matches such as those against Juve or the comeback against Gothenburg, when the team qualified- se for the final with field invasion included. Venables ended up going out on the shoulders of the fans, with a young ball collector close by: Pep Guardiola. But the final in Seville ended badly. The rival was Steaua Bucharest, the army club of communist Romania. The final was decided on penalties, which substitute Bernd Schuster did not want to see as he left the field in a taxi angry with Venables. Barça could not score a single penalty. This season the team won the League Cup in the 1985/86 campaign, but to continue growing, the Londoner asked to sign two British players: Englishman Gary Lineker and Welshman Mark Hughes. Despite Lineker’s goals, the team started the 1987/88 season quite badly and in September 1987 Venables was replaced by Luis Aragonés.
Back home he joined Tottenham Hotspur for a few years, with Gary Lineker again under his command. In 1994 he was chosen to lead the English team, where he had a bad time due to a controversy related to his football business. In fact, his case ended up provoking a debate in the British parliament, where it was investigated whether he had collected signing fees when he was at Tottenham. Although the national team’s results were good, with only one loss against Brazil in a friendly match, it was already decided before Euro 1996 that he would not renew his contract. That England would eliminate Javier Clemente’s Spain in the quarter-finals, before going down on penalties against Germany in the semi-finals.
He then managed the Australian national team (1997-98), Crystal Palace (1998-99), Middlesbrough (2000-01) Leeds United (2002-03) and ended up as assistant to Steve McClaren in the national team of ‘England (2006-07).
#Terry #Venables #league #coach #Valladolid #cursed #Sevilla #dies