Name Juan Gonzalez Full name Juan Gomez Gonzalez Height 1.69 m Place of birth Fuengirola, Spain Position Forward | Playing position Date joined 1977 Role Footballer Awards Pichichi Trophy | |
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Date of birth (1954-11-10)10 November 1954 Date of death 2 April 1992(1992-04-02) (aged 37) Place of death Calzada de Oropesa, Spain Died April 2, 1992, Calzada de Oropesa, Spain | ||
Juanito juan gomez gonzalez the legend of real madrid
Juan Gómez González (10 November 1954 – 2 April 1992), known as Juanito, was a Spanish footballer who played as a forward.
Contents
- Juanito juan gomez gonzalez the legend of real madrid
- Club career
- International career
- Profile Temperament
- Club
- Individual
- References
A player with tremendous dribbling ability whose career was overshadowed by a fierce character, he was best known for his Real Madrid years. He died in a road accident at only 37.
Growing up he supported Real Zaragoza, but as he approached his adulthood he began supporting Real Madrid. Upon his presentation in 1977, he said: "Playing for Real Madrid is like touching the sky, Real Madrid has always been my first choice as a team and Madrid has always been my favorite as a city". Over the course of 13 seasons, he amassed La Liga totals of 350 games and 99 goals.
Juanito earned more than 30 caps for Spain, representing the nation in two World Cups and one European Championship.
Club career
Born in Fuengirola, Province of Málaga, Juanito played as a youth with his local club before joining Atlético Madrid in 1972. While still underage, he allegedly forged his papers so he could play for the Colchoneros' under-18 team. He scored twice on his debut, but a fractured tibia ended his career at Atlético and he never played for the senior side.
Juanito would revive his career at Burgos CF, helping them win the second division in 1975–76. He made his La Liga debut in a 2–1 win over RCD Español in the following season, and was eventually awarded Spanish Footballer of the Year by Don Balón.
Juanito soon attracted the attention of Real Madrid, which signed the player in June 1977. He became a prominent member of the successful Real side during the late 1970s and 1980s, in a squad which also featured Santillana, Uli Stielike, Vicente del Bosque and José Antonio Camacho. Having scored ten goals in his debut season he was instrumental in helping the capital team to five league titles, two Spanish Cups and two UEFA Cups – among his personal highlights were netting twice in the 1980 domestic cup final, incidentally played against Castilla CF, the club's reserves (6–1). On 11 May 1983 he scored through a penalty in the European Cup Winners' Cup final, a 1–2 loss against Aberdeen, and, in the subsequent league campaign, he won the Pichichi Trophy after finishing as joint top goalscorer with 17 goals; during ten seasons with the Merengues he played 284 first division games and scored 85 goals, adding 55 appearances in various European competitions (17 goals).
After leaving Real Madrid, Juanito played for CD Málaga for two seasons, helping the side promote from the second level in his first year, as champions – as legendary László Kubala was the manager – and scoring one of his five goals of the following campaign against former teammate Francisco Buyo, before retiring in 1989 after a few games as an amateur with first club UD Fuengirola Los Boliches, also in his native Andalusia. He subsequently began a working as a coach with CP Mérida, leading the team to a seventh place in division two in 1991–92; however, on 2 April 1992, after watching Real play Torino F.C. in a UEFA Cup match, he was killed in a road accident in Calzada de Oropesa, Toledo, while returning to Mérida.
International career
Juanito played 34 times for Spain, scoring eight goals. His debut came on 10 October 1976 in a 1978 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Yugoslavia, in Sevilla: at the 30-minute mark, he replaced teammate del Bosque in a 2–0 win; in the second match with this opponent, on 30 November 1977 in Belgrade (1–0 success), he was hit with a bottle as he was being replaced and made an obscene gesture towards the crowd.
Juanito represented Spain at the 1978 and 1982 World Cups, and at UEFA Euro 1980. During the 1982 competition, on home soil, he netted a penalty against Yugoslavia in another win (2–1); in 1976, he played Olympic football.
Profile / Temperament
Juanito is considered by most of Real Madrid fans to represent the essence of what the club is about, his spirit often being called upon before matches where the team need to make an unexpected comeback (because of all the comebacks he often led while donning the white shirt). One of these was against Celtic in the quarterfinals of the 1979–80 European Cup, with Real losing 0–2 in the first match in Glasgow: in the second leg the team managed to come from behind after scoring three times without response (the third by him), thus reaching the last four; another comebacks in this period included the downings of Inter Milan and R.S.C. Anderlecht.
Since his death Juanito continued to be remembered in the seventh minute of every home game, as the Ultras chanted "Illa illa illa, Juanito maravilla".
During his career, Juanito was involved in several violent incidents: in 1978 he received a two-year suspension after assaulting referee Adolf Prokop, in a match against Grasshopper Club Zürich. In a UEFA Cup contest against another Swiss side, Neuchâtel Xamax, he spat on former teammate Stielike; in 1987 he was again banned, this time for four years – an error in communications from UEFA meant that the sanction was originally thought to be of five – after deliberately stamping on FC Bayern Munich's Lothar Matthäus face.