From the most loved footballer in Barcelona, Portuguese playmaker Luis Figo became the most hated figure overnight when he controversially switched to El Clasico rivals Real Madrid for then record transfer fee of 60 million dollars. No Clasico passes by without a passing reference to Figo, often as a symbol of greed and selfishness, as a sign of the game’s shifting culture and politics. So significant a moment in football history that even 22 years after the incident, Figo is considered a “traitor” in Camp Nou.
Years later, he opened up to the Guardian about the transfer and the intrigue behind it: “I was a guinea pig. I’d like more value given to my whole career than one episode that marks an age and altered the market, the philosophy of football. It was and is history.”
“In my opinion, a new world began around football: image, marketing, publicity, blah, blah, blah,” Figo says. “Maybe the professional part, the football, was sometimes overlooked for other elements that were growing. Because we were pioneers, maybe decisions were taken out of sync with the football,” added.
Though the recent Netflix documentary Figo Affair portrays him as a victim of a scheme hatched by the Madrid presidential candidate Florentino Pérez, his agent José Veiga and Paulo Futre, who was brokering the transfer, Figo admits his part in it. “The person who decides if I’m going or not is me, Only I could save them, by going to Madrid,” he says.
He could have said no, but he didn’t. “Yeah, I know, But it was the only way to fix it. I was very calm about my own position although at the same time I had a [duty of] care for those working with me. But the decision, I take. I’m the one responsible for it, for my actions. The decision to pull them from that responsibility is mine alone. And a year later I stop working with my agent. Because of some situations that emerged. I said: ‘OK, I’ll take responsibility again. From now on, you have your life, I have mine.’
There was a tinge of regret. In his second return to Camp Nou, the first had crept under the radar, punctuated subtly by jeers and boos by an already partisan crowd, the butchered head of a pig was hurled at him. A mini riot ensued, the game was stopped for 16 minutes and the mutilated bonce of the animal became the face of Spanish football’s most vicious conflict.
Spanish newspaper Marca called it the “the derbi of shame”, while AS led on “Bronx Nou” and El Periódico de Catalunya declared “every corner a Vietnam”. The pro-Barça sports dailies El Mundo Deportivo and Sport inevitably gave a very different version of events: Sport led on “Figo is a provoker” – the man who “poisoned the derby”.
Their lead came from after FC Barcelona’s manager and board accused Figo of inciting the crowd. By being on the pitch. And having the temerity to take the corners “slowly” “Figo provoked the fans,” blasted Louis Van Gaal. “He walked over to the corner really slowly, picked up the bottle slowly, went back to the corner … and all this consciously and deliberately, without the referee doing anything to stop it.”
Even the more moderate opinion of Barça midfielder Xavi Hernández pointed the finger at Figo: “He could have helped more by not taking the corners. He might have been alluding to Xavi when he said he lost friends.
Then he philosophises. “Maybe it was good because I thought they were friends and they weren’t. You realise. When it happened, they no longer want to appear with you because of how it looks [in Barcelona]. It’s complicated, but I understand. Well, I don’t understand but I don’t care. In the end, I have a very strong concept of friendship, so it surprises you; you suffer because you have a relationship with people you think are genuine and it doesn’t turn out that way.”
He harps again on that decision: “I had everything in Barcelona, but you think: ‘It’s not like I’m going to a second-rate club.’ If it hadn’t been Madrid, maybe I wouldn’t have gone. It’s a challenge, a decision based on feeling valued, convincing me I was going to be an extremely important piece. It could have been a cagada, a cock-up, but it wasn’t, thank God.”
But the hate Barcelona and their supporters bestowed on him made him only stronger. Real Madrid was to be crowned league champions that year. “That’s my personality. I coped with pressure; it kept me alert. I’ve always had that competitiveness, that ‘blood’: you want to win, win, win.”
