Francisco Paco Gento López, the best left winger of all time, has died in Madrid at the age of 88. Popularly known as ‘La Galerna del Cantábrico’, Gento was born in Guarnizo in October 1933. He began to stand out in Santander teams such as La Montaña and Rayo Cantabria until he joined Racing de Santander. His debut in the First Division would be with that team in February 1953. Nothing more and nothing less than against Barcelona. His speed, devilish, his power and a formidable quality call the attention of Bernabéu: a dry dribble, unable for the defenders to avoid it more the precision of his left leg. A whole compendium of virtues for a winger. Madrid signed him that summer to strengthen their squad: he paid one and a half million pesetas in addition to loaning out two players, Espina and Urcelay. The background with which he arrived at the white team was just 10 League games and another four in the Cup. The die was cast.
But nevertheless, His beginnings in the white team were not very encouraging. To such an extent that the Bernabéu seriously considered returning him to Racing in exchange for Espina, and even giving him up to another team after the first campaign. But then the figure of his great friend Alfredo Di Stéfano appeared. Aware of the president’s plans, in a meeting between La Saeta and Don Santiago, the latter convinced him: “You can’t get rid of him. It is a portent. I don’t know Espina, because I haven’t seen him play, but I do know Gento, and you can’t miss out on a boy who is 19 or 20 years old. You can’t lose a player of that nature.”, came to tell him. At that meeting he also explained to the president the convenience of signing a compatriot and great friend of his, Héctor Rial. The victorious Madrid of the Five consecutive European Cups began to take shape.
The arrival of Rial marked the outbreak of Gento as a left winger. Rial’s refined technique plus Gento’s speed was one of the strengths of that Madrid in the mid-1950s. All the credit belonged to Héctor, “he explained on one occasion), and advice that the Argentine gave the Cantabrian. Gento, a soft drink lover, used to drink them at lunch and dinner. In one of them, Rial advised Gento to change the soft drinks for water. What he achieved was that the Cantabrian flew even more and took advantage of the filtered and deep passes that the Argentine put into him. It was a great partnership that they formed and that Real Madrid took advantage of.
Already contrasted as a star on the Spanish football scene, Europe would soon know him. In 1957 he was in charge of securing the Whites’ title by scoring the second goal in the European Cup final. Curiously, it was at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium and against Fiorentina. A year later, in Brussels, he would be the main protagonist of the final against another Italian team, in this case Milan. With a two-goal tie after 90 minutes of regulation, Di Stéfano approached the Cantabrian and took him aside: “Paquito, how are you? This can only be fixed by you. Only you have strength, so we’re going to throw them all at you. If you don’t get us out of this, we don’t win.” And Gento decided the final: he delayed his position so that Fontana, the Rossoneri defender in charge of watching him, gave him a little more space, and two minutes into the second half of extra time he sealed the final with a cross shot that beat Soldan. It was the final 3-2.
That summer of 1958, Madrid incorporated Puskas. Madrid formed with the best striker in history: they were made up of Kopa, Rial, Di Stéfano, Puskas and Gento. It would only last one campaign, since Kopa, citing personal reasons, would leave the white team in 1959, but it was precisely Gento’s best campaign: he scored 14 goals in the League (two against Barcelona at the Camp Nou in a match that ended 3- 5 favorable to the whites) and would be proclaimed champion of Europe for the fifth time in a row.
The 1960s were a bittersweet decade for whites.: Almost all the Leagues would be won, but two European Cup finals were lost. In addition, the glorious team of the previous decade began to lose its great protagonists: Di Stéfano left in 1964, after falling in the European Cup final against Inter (3-1) and an argument with Miguel Muñoz. Puskas would leave two years later, in 1966. Even he could have left earlier: his performances are so brilliant that Moratti’s Inter Milan wanted to sign him for the Interista team. It was the year 1961, when the millionaire president of the Neroazzurro team contacted Santiago Bernabéu. The interista president wanted to sign a great star to try to assault the European throne. The whites had won the first five editions, and he wanted his team to be the next team to lift the long-awaited amphora that marked the European champion. But Bernabéu did not see it clearly, so he said that it was not for sale. A short time later, Helenio Herrera asked the president to sign Luis Suárez, whom he had already directed at Barcelona. Inter paid 25 million pesetas at the time for the Galician…
But Gento, the eternal captain, was still important. It is true that he had lost his top speed, but he was the leader supported by the young white players, who would win the European Cup again in 1966, with an eleven made up entirely of Spanish players. Gento became the first and only player to date to be able to take a photo: that of his figure with six European Cups.
But everything has its end. In 1971, and after Madrid fell in the Cup Winners’ Cup final, the Bernabéu decided to remodel the squad. Nobody says anything to Gento, until Raimundo Saporta, then vice president of the white team, called him at home: “I thought that, since he was the captain, he called me to ask for advice about a player, how his behavior throughout the season, and then discuss it with the president. However, he began to talk about my career, that I had been with the team for 18 years, about my future, that I could continue to be linked to the club in some way. As he was telling me that, I remembered Alfredo (by Di Stéfano)… Little by little I realized that he was telling me that he was not going to continue, but not directly., until he offered me to be the coach of the youth team, yes, charging the same as he earned as a player. The day of the team’s presentation I said goodbye. They were in shorts and I was in a suit. That’s how I left.”
Gento took charge of the white subsidiary team for three seasons. He could even have managed the first team, but… it happened in 1974. Miguel Muñoz, then the Whites’ coach, decided to resign as head of the Whites’ bench. Meeting with the Bernabéu, it was Muñoz himself who ‘recommended’ that his successor be Luis Molowny. It was his second big disappointment as a white player. The first was his non-presence in the final phase of the 1964 European Championship, a tournament that the Spanish National Team would end up winning (he played 43 games scoring five goals with the national shirt) at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium against the USSR (2-1) .
So that, in 1971, Gento would hang up his boots. He would have three tribute games due to his career as a madridista. The first was in 1965 against River Plate (the Medal of Sports Merit was awarded to him for his 12-year tenure with the white club). The second, in 1972, against Os Belenenses (coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the inauguration of the Bernabéu), and the third in 2007, against Partizan Belgrade, the team against which he lifted his sixth European Cup. It was against the Portuguese that he would score his last goal as a madridista: he scored it against Félix Mourinho, José’s father, current Roma coach and former Whites manager (from 2010 to 2013). It was in the 15th minute, and from a penalty, another of his virtues (“He looked at the center, never at the goalkeeper, he is going to throw himself to one side and leave you space to score,” he explained). He was then substituted to a thunderous applause. In that game, the new Hungarian-made electronic scoreboard was inaugurated, where the image of the definitive goodbye to Paco Gento was illuminated and stamped.
Always linked to the white set (he also trained Castellón, Palencia and Granada), at the beginning of the 21st century he was appointed Ambassador of the white club, traveling throughout Europe representing the white team. In 2016 he was unanimously elected Honorary President of the white team, succeeding his great friend Alfredo Di Stéfano, who died in 2014. Now Gento leaves behind 12 Leagues, six European Cups, two Cups, two Latin Cups and an Intercontinental Cup, in addition to from a long string of individual trophies. Titles, titles and more titles. This is how the trajectory of ‘La Galerna del Cantábrico’ is summed up. The best left winger of all time.