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Manuel Fonseca Hernández was born near Puente de Vallecas, exactly on Avenida de la Albufera number 67, on August 2, 1948. Vallecas was then an independent municipality (it annexed Madrid in 1950). Sixteen years later, that Vallecano went to the United States when he was orphaned. Manuel, Manolo for his Spanish family, had lost his father at the age of four, suffering from lung disease, and suffered absolute orphanhood at 15 when his mother's heart failed. His uncles decided that he would go to the United States to live with an uncle of his father who had emigrated to California in 1914 from Galisteo, a small town from Extremadura near Plasencia. “I had the opportunity to come to the United States and I came running to live with my great-uncle,” explains this pioneer of the Spanish through his Spanish with an American accent. soccer in the United States, he was Niño de San Idelfonso and sang prizes in the 1959 Christmas lottery.
Manuel played soccer in the neighborhood and stood out. He was a small and skilled left-handed winger, who dominated the watermarks. He was signed by Borondo – “they were the most famous in Vallecas removing Rayo” – and in the second game with that Vallecano team, which does not appear on Google, a scout arrived and signed him for Atleti. He arrived at the youthful mattress trained then by the brother of Adrián Escudero. He trained in his neighborhood, near the Rayo field, and played games in Carabanchel with 18-year-old colleagues who took three bodies from him. “I was more afraid than embarrassed, because I was little,” he recalls. “You run and follow the ball,” the coach told me. He played on the far left and his idols were Gento and Collar. Atleti's winger a bit more, because he looked like him playing, small and skilled. He also idolized Di Stéfano and Peiró, but a little more than the Galgo del Metropolitano.
Before emigrating to the United States, Manolo played for Atleti youth
In 1965 he left his dream of being a footballer in Madrid without knowing that he was going to re-engage as an emigrant in the United States. Her great-uncle lived in Hayward, a town between San Francisco and San Jose, a half-hour drive from Silicon Valley. He quickly found out where soccer was played and joined a youth team called IE Bercovich. They signed him fast because he stood out for his intensity and skill. The only American companion was the doorman. “We won the California Cup,” he recalls with excitement. “There were two Hungarians, one English, two or three Scots and these, the ScottishThey took me to my next team in the California semi-professional league. ”.
As the Scots dominated, the new team was called San Francisco Scots, although Peruvians, Salvadorans or Germans also played. In that league was the Spanish Union, made up of Spanish emigrants who gave Manuel the lead: “They told me to play with them and not with the Scots, but I was already in that team and I couldn't change. We won the California Cup. ” Two years in the United States and two titles.
In the United States in the 1960s it was played very differently from Europe. “It was much more violent football. Sticks were given that you don't see. In many games the kicks flew, so we ran to the midfield and we protected each other by making a circle because the fight was coming. The Greeks team don't see how it hit. People liked contact sports. “
“In the 60s, soccer in the United States was much more violent than in Europe, kicks flew”
Mani Hernández, pioneer of soccer in the United States
Manuel rolled up his sleeves to learn English and decided to study at the University of San José where he took out a soccer scholarship. The college coach would change his life. It was an old boxing trainer who had been recycled into a technical soccer (soccer in the United States). His name was Julius Menéndez, he was the son of Asturians, and he was the coach of the American boxing team at the 1960 Olympics in Rome in which a certain Cassius Clay won the gold medal. The coach of what was later universally known as Muhammad Ali was recycled into football, he had his orders and was the mentor of Manuel Hernández's football career.
In college, the young Spaniard stood out just like the first day he was tested on arrival in California and scored seven goals. “There were people from Persia, Turkey, Latin Americans and while I was studying Spanish literature I kept playing soccer.” At San José State University he scored 68 goals and gave 29 assists in three seasons, scoring six goals in a game against Stanford. And he won the NCAA championship three times.
Mani Hernández was elected the best soccer player in the United States in 1968
He was elected the best soccer player in the United States in 1968. That award was called the Hermann Prize and awarded the best university soccer player, that is, the best player because there was no other league yet (that year the North American Soccer League, known as NASL, started in the one that Manuel Hernández would triumph later). He was the best player in North America with Julius Menéndez as coach (Manuel calls him “Julio”).
That “Julio”, his university coach, the man who prepared Ali for the gold medal in Roma 60, was the assistant to the United States coach. “July”, Julius Menéndez, warned Manuel, whom they were already beginning to call Mani, to do the tests for the USA team that was going to try to qualify for the Munich Olympics in 1972. It was February 1970. Mani could not acquire American citizenship until May, when it would be five years since his arrival from Spain. Without being a US citizen, he passed the tests. You just had to wait until May.
“They all played ball, when I caught the ball I lowered it and dribbled. I was the team's pacifier ”
Mani Hernández, pioneer of soccer in the United States
It was already within the United States team. And with the American passport. Which meant that he could also be called up to fight in the Vietnam War. Demonstrations were taking place across the country against the war that Muhammad Ali refused to go to. And Mani decided to return to Spain to try Rayo Vallecano. “I was training for a week and a half and played a game on the Vallecas field against Atlético in a tribute to Calleja. It didn't come out very well, but I had a great time playing with the professionals. Peñalva, Rayo's coach, gave me good advice: 'Better finish the race and make your life in the United States,' he told me. ” The same advised his uncles. And he returned to the United States to fulfill the American dream.
There the selection awaited him, playing the Pan American Games in Cali, which were the pre-Olympic and was decisive because he scored one of the goals with which the United States qualified for Munich 72 making history as the first American football team to play in the Olympic Games. Mani Hernández was the figure. “They were all big and played with long balls. When the ball came to me, I dribbled, it was the team's pacifier. ” The United States began those Games tying to zero with Morocco. The second game was lost 3-0 to Malaysia. And in the third game, against Germany, “the coach took eight starters and seven got us”.
This is how Mani remembers what his participation in Munich 72 meant: “It was exciting to represent my new country. The Germans organized a great Olympic Games. The atmosphere was very beautiful and the facilities were magnificent. We looked at the rest of the athletes as if they were gods ”. Until terrorists shocked the world by murdering eleven members of the Israeli delegation. “That was a horrible experience”.
“It was exciting to represent my new country at the Munich Olympics in 1972”
Mani Hernández, was the star of the United States Olympic soccer team in Munich 72
On his return to the United States, all the members of that Olympic team were famous. “We used to give clinics, exhibitions, conferences all over the country. We gave soccer classes ”. It was the first football boom to such an extent that the US government legislated that it be taught in schools. “Julio (Julius) Menéndez was the most important person in this area. He even wrote a book, 'How to start playing soccer?' It was called. And that I had never played soccer” In that football boom, Germany's Dettmar Cramer, a FIFA man who had exported football to Japan and arrived in the USA with the same intention, became the coach. Cramer took Mani to absolute two games in 1976. And it was no more because they had to tour and he combined his activity as a footballer with that of a Spanish teacher.
At that time Mani Hernández was already a professional footballer, rather, he paid for football, although he combined it with his beginnings as a coach in schools and as a Spanish teacher. And he was the star of the San Jose Earthquakes. Mani scored the first (and the second) goal in franchise history, set in the NASL (North American Soccer League), the league that had started in 1967 and that in 1975 brought Pelé to the New York Cosmos. “I made about $ 1,000 a month. The money in the NASL was won by the Pelé, Bobby Moore, George Best and the figures they signed. “
“At the‘ Quakes ’I made $ 1,000 a month, the NASL money was earned by Pelé, Bobby More and Cruyff”
Mani Hernández, former player of the San José Earthquakes
Mani Hernández and Pelé pose before the San José Earthquakes-New York Cosmos match played on August 27, 1975 at Spartan Stadium before 19,338 spectators.
He played three seasons in Quakes that made him the legend of the franchise. Nine decades have passed since Mani's first goal and the history of the San José Earthquakes and Mani is his legend and his ambassador. That goal was on May 5, 1974 and he scored it in Canada against the Vancouver Whitecaps against the 17,343 present at Empiere Stadium. Mani says he was lucky: “It was a long ball and I doubted whether to go for it, when I was going to hook it, I also doubted whether to control it or shoot it, but I chose to shoot. The next thing I remember is all my teammates hugging us. I didn't see it. get in”. That day, after the Quakes' first game and Mani Hernández's first goal, they had to be escorted to the airport before the avalanche of fans who would not let them leave the stadium. Mani also fondly remembers the Yugoslav coach who led them on their NASL debut with the Quakes. “Iván Toplak was a terrific starter. He had played for Red Star. The influence of Toplak and after Cramer, in addition to Julio Menéndez's, of course, made me become a coach ”.
He still had a few years to become a coach. He had left face Pelé with the Cosmos and play alongside Johnny More and Jimmy Johnstone, the Scottish winger who became famous in Spain for the Glasgow Atleti-Celtic European Cup tie, in which they were seen with Panadero Díaz. “Jimmy Johnstone played very well. And he drank a lot. And drunk he haggled over everyone. What a footballer! ”, Mani evokes enthusiastically.
Mani Hernández was twice international with the absolute selection of the United States
Mani Hernández always combined his matches with San José Earthaquakes with his profession as a Spanish teacher, as well as that of coach in the academies that were proliferating throughout the country, and as a proselytizer for soccer.
When he left the San José Earthquakes (he stopped playing, but he never left the Quakes), focused on the expansion of soccer with exhibitions and conferences across the country, and in 1979, Mani embarked on a new footballing adventure. He started playing in the Major Indoor Soccer League (MILS was played from 1978 to 1992) where a kind of futsal was played, played on hockey courts and you could use the walls of the field.
“Don't see the kicks that they gave in the Major Indoor Soccer League next to the hockey wall, I had to jump so they wouldn't hunt me down”
Mani Hernández, player of Detroit Lightning and the San Francisco Fog in the MLS Indoor
That indoor soccer was a fast and very violent game. The skilled Mani was good at it, but he had to protect himself. “Don't see the kicks that were next to the hockey wall, you had to jump so they wouldn't hunt you down. I was already 30 years old, but I was fit. He knew that kind of football after playing 5 games with the Quakes In 1975 NASL also tested this format. ” In those 5 games he scored 3 goals.
In his time in MILS indoor soccer, Mani was a member of the Detroit Lightning and the San Francisco Fog. He scored 17 goals and gave 14 assists in 61 games. In his entire career he wore number 6, except for the 79-80 campaign, which he played in Detroit, which wore number 22.
In Major Indoor League Soccer he lived on soccer. “We made about $ 3,000 a month and with that salary in the late 70s you could live well. All courts were filled. It was a resurgence like the one at the beginning of the Quakes in which we filled the stadiums. We were famous and there were in fields that we had to leave escorted by the police before the avalanche of fans“
“I played a game with Best and he said,” Have a go! ” And he would say to me: “You keep running.” Not a ball passed me! He was suckier than me! “
Mani Hernández, legend of the San José Earthquakes
After he had retired and started his successful coaching career, Mani played a game with George Best. The Irish crack also played in the San José Earthquakes in the 80-81 campaign a total of 53 games in which he scored 21 goals, one of them the best in NASL history. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Quakes it was a party of the greatest figures. Mani Hernández played on the far left and Best behind him, on the inside. “Pass me the ball, Georgi! I was yelling at him. And Best tells me: you keep running. I did not stop running and not a ball passed me. I wasn't passing it on to anyone. I was just haggling. He was a better sucker than me! ”Says Mani, laughing.
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Why soccer has failed to win over Americans is a recurring question. There have been several phases in which the sport preferred by the majority of the inhabitants of the earth has been tried to triumph in the first world power. And Mani Hernández has lived them all. The first time was after the success of the United States' qualification for the Munich 72 Games, in which Mani participated.
Mani remembers how, after the return of the Olympic Games, they gave exhibitions all over the country and put the soccer as a compulsory subject in schools. The United States always had a very footballing man in his administration: Henry Kissinger. At the same time that he gave logistical support to establish dictatorships for South America, he was a balompedic activist and the endeavor of his life, in addition to fighting communism devastating democracies, was that in the United States the parties lived with the passion of Europe, Argentina or Brazil soccer. For this, in a second phase, although the Pelé, Cruyff and Best did not manage to yankees they fell in love with soccer, soccer academies were set up all over the country.
“Soccer has been slow to spread in the United States due to the distribution of the sports dollar: it goes into American football, basketball, baseball and hockey”
Mani Hernández, pioneer and soccer legend in the United States
Mani Hernández combined his career as a soccer player and teacher as a monitor and coach in these academies. “There are many means. The parents paid the fee so that their children could learn to play soccer and soccer was already played better than in the 1960s, with less violence, ”But even so, soccer did not make the hobby that was intended.
Mani Hernández explains it from the economy: “The problem is the distribution of the sports dollar. The sports fan spends his money on football, basketball, baseball, and hockey, so he has no football left. But MLS is already gaining interest and following. “
“Soccer needs an international success for the American team like the one women have had: now all girls want to play soccer in the United States”
Mani Hernández, former Olympic and absolute international soccer player from the United States
Kissinger managed to get FIFA to give the United States the celebration of the 94th World Cup. That World Cup served to attract more fans, but not as many as Henry would have liked. According to Mani Hernández, best soccer player in the United States in 1968 and protagonist in the first person of the entire evolution of soccer in North America, “soccer in the United States needs a success for the national team worldwide, an international triumph. The women's team has had it and all the girls want to play soccer in the United States. ” Mani has trained girls and has won many titles. Meanwhile, lThe MLS is growing as a league and the United States will organize another world cup, together with Canada and Mexico, in 2026. And this World Cup may be the definitive accolade that Herny Kissinger was looking for for soccer in the USA. And that Mani Hernández, pioneer of North American soccer, sees it.
Once retired, Mani dedicated himself to being a coach and winning championships. He always combined his role as educator, monitor and coach with that of player and it was from 1982 when he focused on the benches, from where he was also a pioneer in the United States as he was a footballer because he started the boom in women's football. And with the Presentation High School San Jose won 17 league championships and eight Central Coast section titles in the 24 years who led this team. The teachings during his time as a player of Julius Menéndez, Iván Toplak and Dettmar Cramer were decisive in his vocation as coach. Several girls he coached became international: Danielle Slaton and Aly Wagner, from the United States, and Mikka Hansen, from Denmark.
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In 2015, he was inducted into the San José Hall of Fame for his entire sports career. And it also has a field that bears his name, the Mani Hernández Soccer Field. Since he retired as a coach, he has served as an ambassador for the San José Earthquakes and represents the team of his life in acts. “I keep signing autographs,” says Mani proudly. The boots with which he scored the first goal of the Quakes they are in the club museum. Nor does anyone forget that Mani led the team when the Quakes beat megacrack Pelé, who visited with his New York Cosmos a Spartan Stadium crowded by 30 thousand euphoric fans.
As a coach he was also a pioneer and won over 30 titles with men's and women's teams.
When he reviews his life, he considers himself lucky for his sports career and for having met in his life trajectory people who always advised him well, starting with Julius Menéndez, the coach of Cassius Clay in Rome 60 who later recycled himself into football, as well as Manolo Peñalva, the Rayo coach who told him in 1970 when he went to test Vallecas, that he better stay in the United States, finish the race and play soccer in America. Mani considers himself satisfied for having trained in North America. “At James Logan I had excellent teachers. I will always be grateful to the United States for giving me the opportunity to learn and obtain an education. In addition to soccer, the United States has given me everything. ” her son Elliot Hernández, who was not a footballer, although he played well. Elliot became a Marine and was in three wars with the army of the United States of America. In Spain he has a family. And they keep calling him Manolo. One of his cousins, Carlos Fonseca, who is also a coach, has insisted that the history of Mani Hernández be known in Vallecas, Madrid and Spain.
Mani is currently a Quakes ambassador; continues signing autographs and plays golf with ex-partner Johnny Moore
Mani has a good retirement. He managed well what he earned as a Spanish teacher, as a footballer and as a coach. And with the technological boom in the last years of the Silicon Valley, he sold a family property and what he earned he invested in a house with a golf course where almost every day he makes a hole with his partner Johnny Moore, who stayed to live in the United States. Mani and Johnny remember battles of the Quakes like when he scored the first goal in the history of the San José franchise that competes in the current MLS. While the California sun browns his skin and kicks on the 18th hole green, Mani lives awake that American dream that started at age 16. Mani birdies. He outlines the half smile of that Child from San Ildefonso who sang the Christmas lottery of 1959 and, with her Spanish with an English accent, but still maintaining that cheli vallecano déjà, she exclaims softly aloud: “Look how far a guy from Vallecas has come!”. That Vallecas guy was a footballer. The best player of the United States in 1968, international with USA in Munich 72 and star of the Quakes. That guy from Vallecas is a pioneer in the American conquest of soccer. They don't call him Manuel there. Nor Manolo. They call him Mani. Mani Hernández. He was born in Vallecas and triumphed in America. And this is his story. And he says goodbye after telling it. “We have to have a few rods and keep talking about football!” Of course, Manolo!