Ricardo Arias, the ambassador Di Stéfano always loved

Ricardo Arias he played 521 games in his 16 seasons with Valencia. Only Fernando Gómez (553) has done it more times, although without spending so many years in the black and white squad. Arias, as a player, coach and ambassador, has spent 32 years linked to the club, with which today he will have a new experience: “I will step on the Bernabéu box for the first time.”

Arias currently practices, together with Miguel Tendillo and Miguel Ángel Bossio, as ambassador of the club, to which he returned in 2015 after a difficult personal and professional stage. It so happens that the last two Valencia visits were to Valdebebas and, in the previous ones, in which he already went as a club employee, Arias did so to witness the game from the press area as a commentator on the club’s official radio .

Arias, looking back, had two formal offers from Real Madrid, as many as goals scored in the First Division. One went to Sevilla in Mestalla, whose celebration, due to his youthful hot blood, cost him the payment of a fine (he dedicated a cut of sleeves to a sector of the stands that he had rebuked throughout that afternoon) and the other goal was he scored against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu, after a penalty that Miguel Ángel stopped Bonhoff and whose rejection sent Arias to the back of the net. It was the first day of the 78/79 season, which ended with Valencia as Cup champion.

It was precisely in 1979, after that Cup final that Valencia won against Real Madrid at the Vicente Calderón, that the first Madrid attempt to sign Arias came. Luis de Carlos and Ramos Costa agreed on the transfer, but the president che recoiled. The achievements of that season, in which Mario Alberto Kempes was the benchmark of the team and Arias, despite his youth, one of its pillars, weighed on the decision of the top leader, aware that the Mestalla stands would not forgive him. This is what the then new president Vicente Tormo confessed to Arias years later.

Thus, staying at Valencia, Arias agreed with Di Stéfano, who took the reins of the team the following season, in which Valencia won the Cup Winners’ Cup and the European Super Cup. Since then, when Di Stéfano was at Chamartín’s offices, he always wanted to take him to Real Madrid. But there was only one formal offer.

The second was received by Arias when Valencia were relegated to the Second Division in 1986. The president and the Real Murcia coach came to his house to sign him. It was a bridge transfer, for a year, with the commitment that the following season he would end up at Real Madrid, as happened with Miguel Tendillo. But Arias, despite the fact that he was 27 years old, at a time when most hung up their boots at 30 and therefore could be facing his last great contract, he told them: “Come back if you want a year from now and we will talk, because now I have to help promote Valencia to First Division”.