2023-12-30 19:45:26
BarcelonaA visionary. Yes, an accurate adjective, without exaggeration, to describe the figure of Ricard Cabot i Montalt (Barcelona, 1885-1958). A key, fundamental figure in the history of Catalan and national football during the first three decades of the 20th century, the decades, indeed, foundational of the sport that today we pompously call “king”.
“It is incomprehensible that no one has ever bothered to write Cabot’s biography”, laments the historian Carles Santacana when I call him to find out his documented point of view on who was everything in the world of football Who was a player for X – the pre-Espanyol of the beginning of the last century–, who was a pioneer of sports journalism with Sports i Stadium, who founded the Catalonia Futbol Club, who laid the foundations of an incipient Catalan Football Federation, who was vice-president of Barça in one of Joan Gamper’s boards, who was general secretary and a key part of the Spanish Federation of football. At the head of the latter, during the second half of the 1920s, Cabot regulated a sport that had been amateur until then and became stubborn in professionalizing it until building the league that started in the 1928-1929 season and continues to this day . Cabot is unending. Within the long list of his milestones, there are two that affect the bone pier of Barça’s history: the Camp de les Corts and Ladislau Kubala.
But what exactly brings me to focus on him today? An important finding. The Cabot fund has been circulating the sports collectibles market for some time now. For some unknown reason, his entire documentary legacy was not preserved and presumably ended up in the hands of a private collector. A couple of months ago, coming from some indeterminate place in Tarragona, a few folders with photographs, correspondence, documents, cards and miscellaneous paperwork fell into my hands. All with a common link: Ricard Cabot. Letters of all kinds, some with sensitive references to the Civil War. Also letters addressed to and received from sports clubs, letters of thanks for their good management, for example.
We publish two unpublished documents: his letter of resignation from the board of directors of Joan Gamper and the letter of adhesion to the national side shortly before the end of the Civil War
“Everyone recognizes Cabot as the essential manager and architect of Spanish football – stresses Carles Santacana -. He is in charge of making the regulations of 1926, the first with a face and eyes, and between 1926 and 1928 it is thanks to his tenacity that the league tournament is held”, he adds. “He saw clearly that total professionalisation, with the consequent salary, was essential, that the winds in Europe were blowing in this direction”. In this sense, the journalist Enric Calpena, good connoisseur of the history of football and author of the novel The first captain -about the figure of Joan Gamper-, it also highlights that Cabot was the one who got Gamper to break with some resistance to progress.
The resignation of the board of Gamper
The historical president, for example, was resistant to professionalization and, as a result, also accumulated a certain fear of growth. With Cabot as vice-president, and with his advice and push, Gamper opened the doors to a new home for Barça, the legendary Camp de les Corts, a giant step in the history of the entity. The documentation rescued from oblivion includes Cabot’s invaluable letter of resignation from Gamper’s board of directors. Dated September 13, 1923, it details that “facts well known” by both of them prompt him to take the decision: “Absolute disapproval of my action”, “I do not have the confidence I deserve” or “my work as deputy of the council would from now on be completely disruptive” are some of the terms used by Cabot. It’s a pity that the final reason for the resignation is not entirely clear.
Despite his resignation, Cabot never gave up his support for Barcelona, he was a lifelong member. The documentation of his fund includes a few membership cards from the 1940s. In fact, his Barcelonianism was key a few years later, when the figure of an expatriate Hungarian would arrive to change the history of the club. But we leave that for the end. Let us now focus on the turbulent and tragic period of the Civil War. As general secretary of the RFEF – first in Madrid and then with the transfer of headquarters to Barcelona –, Cabot fought to keep the practice of football alive despite the effects of war.
Santacana emphasizes how transversal Cabot’s figure was within the Federation. When the Popular Front took control, they kept Cabot: “They knew what a good manager he was and they kept him despite knowing that he certainly did not agree with their ideology.” The course of the war meant that the national side also wanted to seize control of the organization and set up a parallel federation. FIFA intervened to make peace and in November 1937 recognized the legitimacy of the two federations: “The two sides met in the same waiting room!”, says Santacana. And Cabot, of course, was there. As a bridge man, able to weave complicities and common interests for the good of football architecture, he knew how to swim between two waters.
The letter we are also publishing addressed by Cabot to Julián Troncoso, president of the RFEF, is extremely interesting. Dated February 18, 1939, with the Civil War already on track for national victory. “Imperatives of various kinds have forced me to remain in the red zone until now.”. “[…] They put me in a position to receive, with a devotion and conviction that few can match, a regime of authority and unity like the one that dawns in Spain.”. “I put myself at the disposal of the new Spain, a great and free one, with all fervor and with all enthusiasm”. “Long live Spain, Up Spain“. “Beware of making too summary evaluations of this kind of letters”, warn Calpena and Santacana at the same time, since manifestations of Franco’s adherence are not at all unusual at that time and what they reflect, although it may be shocking, does not stop be a certain will not to take harm.
His influence was decisive in the construction of the Corts field and in the signing of Kubala
Recognized as a transversal figure and with prestige on his own merits, Cabot remained in the RFEF from the end of the war until two years before his death. “The whole international football world recognized him as the main interlocutor in Spain”, Santacana points out. As an established general secretary, Cabot had time to change, for the second time, the history of the club of his heart. In 1950, a young Ladislau Kubala plays with his club, Hungary, in a friendly against Real Madrid. Santiago Bernabéu sees it clearly: he must be signed.
An expatriate who ended up becoming a legend
Kubala was a fugitive expatriate from Hungary and was not authorized by FIFA to play official matches. To formalize the signing, a fundamental procedure was needed: the transfer international Ricard Cabot, as the essential hierarchy of the RFEF, was clear: the signing could not be done. And it wasn’t done. When at that time the interest immediately fell on Futbol Club Barcelona, the procedure was no longer so fundamental and the RFEF (Cabot) allowed Barça to sign Kubala as an amateur. Everything accelerated shortly after with the express Spanish nationalization of the striker, who turned out to be a shining star not exempt, it must be remembered, of controversies and discords.
The documentary fund recovered also includes a couple of acts of the Barça board of directors in which, due to his indomitable indiscipline, the continuity of the Hungarian star is put into consideration. Luckily, he stayed and grew the club’s excitement exponentially. To the point where he had to move again. The construction of the Camp Nou is due, in large part, to the growth in football and social mass that Barça experienced thanks to the genius of Kubala.
It is not at all bold, therefore, to say that Ricard Cabot is the key piece that changed (at least twice) the history of Barça.
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