Míchel Salgado hopes his experience will stand him in good stead
when Blackburn Rovers head to Old Trafford. Photograph: Christopher
Thomond for the Guardian
Míchel Salgado is surprisingly disarming for someone Steve
McManaman once described as "a genuine psychopath, even in
training". Maybe that's his trick? "I'm not like that at all,"
protests a defender who had to win and win with style for 11 years
at Real Madrid yet is now a firm admirer
of Sam Allardyce. "I think he meant I was a pain in the arse. You
must fight for your place every single day at Real Madrid and so I
was always pushing myself forward. And I was a pain in the arse."
Salgado is still pushing himself forward at 35, but this is a
weekend that demands he look back.
Two opposition stadiums stand out for Salgado in a career
distinguished by four La Liga titles and two Champions
League triumphs with Real and now an Indian summer at Venky's-owned
Blackburn Rovers. One is Old Trafford,
where he should maintain an ever-present league record for Rovers
this afternoon, and the other is the Camp Nou, where he has agreed
to be a pitch-side guest for Sky Sports when his old club renew the
deepest rivalry in the game on Monday night. A decorated servant of
Real Madrid stood alongside 98,000 Catalonians? "I'm going to get
dogs' abuse!" he laughs. And laughs. McManaman may have had a
point.
Salgado describes El Clásico as "a nation split in two"
and a brief résumé of his playing days on enemy territory explains
why Monday's assignment holds no concern. "The toughest game I
faced in my life was the first Clásico with [Luís] Figo in
our team after he moved from Barcelona [in 2000]," the former Spain
international recalls. "On the way to the stadium they broke four
or five windows on our team bus. By the time we reached the stadium
we were all lying on the floor of the bus as bottles and stones
came through the windows, but even while we were taking cover we
were shouting to each other: 'We have to win this game!' It was a
special game because of Figo, and he is still the traitor where
Barcelona are concerned."
The head of a cockerel, bicycle chains and mobile phones greeted
Figo on his first return to Barcelona, when Real lost 2-0 but
ultimately amassed 17 more points to win the league. It was his
reappearance two years later, however, that entered folklore
courtesy of a flying pig, or at least part of it, when, as the
right-back behind the Portuguese right-winger, Salgado had one of
the finest views in the house.
"The first time I went up to support him at a short corner I
could see they were throwing everything at him," he says. "That was
the night they threw a pig's head, a big bottle of whisky and even
a knife. After the first short corner, and after seeing a knife fly
past, I said to Figo: 'No more short corners tonight, just put it
in the box. You're on your own.'"
A collision of grand styles and high talent provides the lure
for the latest edition of El Clásico but an element of
pantomime villainy remains, with José Mourinho taking his bow as
the Real manager at the home of his former employers. Salgado
dismisses Mourinho's ability to bring a new dimension to a
historic, cultural, political and sporting rivalry. "Mourinho was
quite unknown in football when he was the assistant to [Sir Bobby]
Robson so it will not have the same impact as Figo," he says. Nor
does the philosophy of a coach who is in Uefa's dock once again
amid allegations Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos collected deliberate
red cards against Ajax sit comfortably with Salgado. "Maybe his
style is not the right style according to the history of Real
Madrid but it is the right style for right now, because they need
to win and they are desperate. It is the right style and he is the
right guy."
Salgado adds: "For me, the Real Madrid president, Florentino
Pérez, appointed Mourinho because he was trying to find the
anti-Guardiola. Mourinho is the only guy able to beat Guardiola in
the knockout stage of the Champions League, as he showed with Inter
last season. In their desperation they saw this as the reason to go
for Mourinho. They have gone two years without the title and they
have spent a lot of money. I think Mourinho is the right man to
beat Guardiola, to be the anti-Guardiola, to win a trophy and to
provide the club with the stability they need to work. The most
important thing for Real Madrid right now is to break this
Barcelona cycle. After that, build a team for the future and, after
Mourinho, the president needs to find his own Guardiola. By that I
mean a manager who grew up in Real Madrid and who knows all the
values of Real Madrid."
According to the veteran right-back those values include "being
a winner, but winning with style" and handling the mental pressure
of "representing the biggest club in the world on and off the
pitch." Another aspect of Real life that Salgado valued highly was
camaraderie between an electric mix of talent, nationalities
and egos, and he was invariably drawn to the English contingent of
David Beckham, Jonathan Woodgate, Michael Owen and McManaman, a
lasting friend. Beckham, he says, "never tried to speak Spanish but
I helped him settle in. I used to take him to the Irish Rover pub
every week. Whatever people think of Beckham, he was a great
professional for Real Madrid."
When Pérez, who succeeded Salgado's father-in-law, Lorenzo Sanz,
as Real president, tried to force McManaman out of the club it was
the defender signed from Celta Vigo who led the resistance. "The
first and biggest mistake of Florentino Pérez was not to renew the
contract of Vicente del Bosque," he states. "After that, it was not
renewing the contract of Fernando Hierro, our captain, then
McManaman, [Fernando] Morientes and [Claude] Makélélé. We had a
great team and then we had to change a lot of things to keep
going."
Salgado was a committed anglophile long before he accepted
Allardyce's offer of a trial at Blackburn last year, having spent a
month in Margate as part of a school exchange as a teenager. He
spoke to Hierro and Iván Campo about their former manager at Bolton
before signing on a free transfer and credits Allardyce as "giving
me a second youth". To still be playing at Old Trafford at 35, and
playing well for Rovers, is a source of immense satisfaction and
pride.
"United were European champions when we beat them 3-2 at Old
Trafford. Redondo's heel for Raúl's goal!" he recalls. "That was
the most beautiful knockout stage in the Champions League I ever
played and Raúl says exactly the same. The second time we lost 4-3,
although no one seems to remember that. I just remember the crowd
applauding us and Ronaldo. I fell in love with the English crowd
that night. In our dressing room afterwards someone said we would
never lose again if we had that crowd behind us in Spain.
"It will be great for me to face Manchester United with Rovers,
a pure football club, and while I have great memories of beating
United in the Champions League I still have the motivation to beat
them in the Premier League."