The game played by the three Gento brothers

Pronouncing the surname Gento is talking about a saga whose family tree has sprouted several illustrious Real Madrid. Without a doubt, Paco Gento has been its greatest exponent, the only footballer to have won the European Cup six times. Her nephew, Paco Llorente Gento, married in turn to a daughter of Grosso, was a footballer for Madrid and also for Atlético, steps that his son has later followed, Marcos, grandnephew, therefore, of Paco Gento. The other three brothers of Paco Llorente have also been linked to the club: Julio as a footballer and José Luis and Toñín as players in the basketball section.

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Although the emergence of Marcos Llorente has recently delved into that part of Gento’s lineage, a lesser known story is that La Galerna del Cantábrico had two other footballer brothers. With Antonio, the youngest of the three, he shared a dressing room in the Madrid first team in 1961-62. He was known as Gento III, because the median, Julio, Gento II, had arrived a season earlier at Plus Ultra, at that time a subsidiary of Madrid. Julio did not make his debut in an official match with the first team, but he did there was a match that brought together the three brothers.

It was on January 28, 1959, in a friendly against Zurich at the Bernabéu that served to test several youngsters, including Gento’s two younger brothers, who were active in Plus Ultra. From that day dates the image in which the three appear together with the madridista shirt. The Whites won 5-2 with two goals from Mateo and three from the Gento: one from Paco and two from Antonio. The chronicler of ‘Abc’, Lorenzo López Sancho, ‘Isidro’, ventured that the two younger brothers “came to honor a new football lineage from which we all hope so much that, if the addition of some nephews is achieved, it will be able to produce a great super champion team: Real Madrid FC”. He hit the target.

July (Guarnizo, 4-24-1939), as we mentioned before, he did not get to play an official match with Madrid. After spending three seasons in Plus Ultra, he went to play Elche in the First Division, a category in which also he played two years later enrolled in the ranks of the extinct CD Málaga. Between both seasons, he was part of the Deportivo de La Coruña squad who got promotion to First Division in 1961-62. In the silver category he played another five seasons, between 1963 and 1968, in the ranks of Racing de Santander, to prolong his career again in the Plus Ultra and in Palencia CF. He passed away in 2016 at the age of 77..

Antonio (Guarnizo, 10-25-1940) yes he could boast of playing three league games with the Madrid shirt, in the 1961-62 season, in which the white team won the League and Cup double. After that campaign he did not continue in the Madrid discipline and continued a long career in the Levante, the Racing de Santander (where he spent the five seasons with his brother Julio), Real Oviedo and Racing again. With all these teams he played in the Second Division, a category in which he is one of the four players with the most seasons played (15). He hung up his boots at the Unión Club de Astillero. He passed away on Christmas Day 2020, just two months after his 80th birthday..