The Mysterious Player Who REFUSED To Become The GOAT — Transcript

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1. 0:00So…listen to this… The year was 1986, Maradona had just carried Argentina to the
2. 0:05World Cup title… and… Alongside him, was Bruno Passarelli, a journalist who was documenting
3. 0:10the first months of his life following that earth shattering performance… As they walked
4. 0:15into the Napoli training grounds for the first time since the tournament… The fans lost
5. 0:19their minds… and chanted over and over again: “Maradona, Maradona, he is better than Pelé”...
6. 0:25but somehow Diego seemed distant… which led Passarelli to question what was wrong…
7. 0:30and that’s when Maradona spoke out the words that cemented one of the biggest fairy tales,
8. 0:35one of the biggest mysteries in the history of the sport: “These fans are great but
9. 0:40what they don’t know is there is a player even better than Pelé and I. He is Jorge
10. 0:44González, El Mágico, he's playing for Cadiz… Phenomenal”...
11. 0:50Passarelli stared at him for a second and then asked who that man was… However, Maradona
12. 0:54didn’t bother putting it into words… He knew those never did him justice, so instead
13. 0:59he said: “Go and find out, you ignorant man”...
14. 1:12this huge building shaped like a football… They call it the Hall of Fame… if you go
15. 1:17there you will see statues of Maradona, Pelé, Puskas, Ronaldo, Zidane, Beckenbauer, Platini…
16. 1:23Only the best of the best… But among those familiar faces and names… you will again
17. 1:28find an odd one… Jorge “El Mágico” González… As I said, it has this way of
18. 1:34popping up over and over again… Valderrama said he was convinced Mágico was an extraterrestrial,
19. 1:40Manolin Bueno said he was so good, he made it seem like Maradona was playing with a limp
20. 1:45and even more impressive, at one point, he was the only living football player to have
21. 1:49a stadium named after him… He’s become known as “The player who could have been
22. 1:53the best, but did not want to”.... The one who wanted to be forgotten… Yet, his face
23. 1:59seems to be permanently burnt into the memory of those who saw him play… Even a decade
24. 2:03after his retirement, people spot him in his home country of El Salvador, they claim that
25. 2:07he’s become a taxi driver… That once they hit him with the question “Are you El Mágico?”,
26. 2:12that he simply says “No, magicians do magic, I drive a taxi”... But where did it all
27. 2:22go wrong? Well… it was Maradona’s fault actually… kind of… In 1984, the two were
28. 2:29both playing for Barcelona side by side… but if they were trouble on the pitch, they
29. 2:34were even worse off of it… and at one point, the team was staying at this hotel in California
30. 2:38and Maradona decided to hit the fire alarm in the middle of the night as a prank and
31. 2:43somehow it was Mágico who ended up getting punished for that whole situation… but we’ll
32. 2:49get there… because first I have to explain how he even got to Barcelona…
33. 2:52You see, if you’re born in El Salvador, your chances of making it to European Football
34. 2:56are next to none… I literally can’t think of any other player… But Mágico was just
35. 3:01different… At 16, he was already making his debut and before he had even turned 18,
36. 3:06he was already moving to Deportivo FAS for 60 thousand colones… which was absurd at
37. 3:11the time… especially for a teenager, but thankfully for them, it worked out incredibly
38. 3:17well… I mean, FAS was a great club, they had 4 league titles to their name… but the
39. 3:21last of them had been 16 years before his arrival and then… well… then they won
40. 3:26it 4 times in 5 years… and that wasn’t even it…
41. 3:29In his second year at the club he led them to the CONCACAF Champions Cup title, they
42. 3:33were named the best team in all of Central and North America… In fact, they almost
43. 3:37went a step further, drawing the first leg of the Interamerican Cup against Olimpia…
44. 3:42The Libertadores champions… At that point, everyone in the country was already convinced
45. 3:47he was some kind of wizard… and they didn’t even know what was coming next year…
46. 3:51In 1980, he joined El Salvador for the CONCACAF Championship qualification and somehow managed
47. 3:57to get them through the whole campaign with only one defeat, finishing in second place,
48. 4:01topping the goalscorers table, even outscoring Hugo Sanchez, with 5 goals in 7 matches…
49. 4:07But wait, that still wasn’t all of it… The year after that, once they were actually
50. 4:12in the Championship itself, they knew that if they finished top 2 they would make it
51. 4:15to the World Cup since the whole tournament also doubled as a sort of qualifying stage…
52. 4:20But just as everyone assumed the other countries would be fighting for the second place spot,
53. 4:24since, according to everyone, Mexico always won… They faced them and Mágico pulled
54. 4:29off one of the most absurd runs you’ll ever see and only 8 minutes from the end of the
55. 4:34match they pulled off the impossible… They beat Mexico for the first time in 26 years…
56. 4:40In fact, it was around this time that a few of Mágico’s clips were shown to the president
57. 4:44of Valladolid and he literally said: “I was almost scared watching him… I had not
58. 4:49seen a wonder like that since the times of Pelé”...
59. 4:53Once the tournament was over, El Salvador was ahead of Mexico by just 1 point, in second
60. 4:58place… For only the second time in history, El Salvador would be at the world cup… all
61. 5:04thanks to that moment of genius… Right then and there, according to everyone in the country,
62. 5:10Mágico was like a saint… And then with each friendly that led up to the world cup
63. 5:15things only got crazier… At one point, they faced PSG, as weird as it may sound, and they
64. 5:21beat them 3 to 1, with Mágico playing so well that a journalist described it, by saying
65. 5:25“Might be the best performance I’ve ever seen, every time he dashed towards goal, it
66. 5:30was like he was going by car, while the others followed him on foot”... By the end, the
67. 5:35Parisiens tried everything to sign him, but once it was all done, he just never showed
68. 5:39up to sign the contract… Years later when they asked about it, he claimed he didn’t
69. 5:44like the traffic, didn’t like the cold, didn’t like the language and above all,
70. 5:48didn’t like the french… Regardless, add to this a stunning performance
71. 5:52vs Honduras, only 2 months before the world cup, where El Mágico assisted the first and
72. 5:57scored 2 free kicks, one of them in the 89th minute to go in front 3 to 2… and as they
73. 6:01went into the tournament, the whole country seemed convinced that somehow Mágico alone
74. 6:06would be enough to make them stand out… but instead… what awaited them was “the
75. 6:10most bitter and terrible night in memory”... Right on their first match, El Salvador was
76. 6:16defeated 10 to 1… the biggest defeat in the history of the world cup…
77. 6:22They tried to justify themselves, claiming they had been unable to train the day before,
78. 6:26since their equipment had been stolen, which was confirmed by FIFA… but regardless, it
79. 6:31was a huge shame… the only positive thing was that, believe it or not, Mágico was still
80. 6:36great, in fact, I’ve seen claims that some newspapers even named him man of the match,
81. 6:41as much as that sounds impossible, I mean go watch it, he was tireless, he kept going
82. 6:46at them over and over again and it did work once, it was thanks to one of his incredible
83. 6:51runs that El Salvador scored what is still to this day their only ever goal at a World
84. 6:55Cup… In fact, several newspapers named him as one of the best in the tournament, despite
85. 7:00going out after 3 consecutive defeats… and in the aftermath of it all, he was flooded
86. 7:04with transfer offers like never before so, oddly enough, it adds up, he himself said
87. 7:09that tournament had been “Ugly but beautiful”... among all the chaos, he still managed to shine…
88. 7:15Atlético, Fiorentina, Atalanta, even PSG took another jab at his signing and there
89. 7:20were rumors of Inter doing the rounds… teams all across Europe tried but they all failed…
90. 7:25He had an excuse not to sign for any of them… Italy was too humid, when it came to England,
91. 7:31he said he “couldn’t ever live on an island” and Germany… Well, he refused to even talk
92. 7:36about them… By the end, he had signed for Cadiz, in the Spanish second tier, why? It’s
93. 7:42one of the hottest places in Europe and they love flamenco… that’s it… and even there,
94. 7:47he only showed up for his supposed presentation 20 days late, after the club had to get the
95. 7:51police to go look for him… turns out, he was all the way out in Madrid with a friend,
96. 7:56just going from one bar to the other… And this behavior wouldn’t stop here…
97. 8:01Once there, he was out and about, dancing and drinking, wandering through the streets,
98. 8:05talking to anyone who came his way… And then, of course, when it came to training,
99. 8:09he was always late and when he did showed up, he fell asleep in the locker room… But
100. 8:13believe it or not, his teammates and manager kinda loved him… after all they could never
101. 8:18complain about his performances, and he was extremely charismatic so they took him in
102. 8:22like a sort of mascot… always trying to find funny ways to get him to wake up early…
103. 8:26Once the manager bought him this obnoxious donald the duck clock that would quack at
104. 8:30him until he woke up, on another occasion they sent a band to his house, just like in
105. 8:35the movies…. but regardless, he would always have these funny one-liners… if the coach
106. 8:40asked him to make more runs, he would say that “running is for cowards”... if he
107. 8:53his autograph, he would spend like 2 minutes on it, always trying to make every single
108. 8:57one special… he also loved talking to the homeless, he would help them out with whatever
109. 9:01they needed, once one of his teammates gave him one of his expensive jackets, because
110. 9:05Magico would always arrive to club dinners and meetings wearing a t shirts and shorts,
111. 9:09but only a few days later his teammate found some homeless guy sleeping on the street with
112. 9:13his jacket on… Obviously, there was much more to his life than football… as he said
113. 9:18it himself: "I don’t treat football like a career, I just play for fun”...
114. 9:23But don’t get it wrong, what he did on the pitch was still by far the primary excuse
115. 9:28for his actions… Though no one denied that he was often very lazy on the pitch, it was
116. 9:32guaranteed that every game there would be a magic moment that would completely change
117. 9:35the course of that match… It was undeniable that he was the most important player on the
118. 9:40team… Not only did he get them promoted to La Liga
119. 9:43for only the third time in their history, right on his debut season… but once there,
120. 9:47he pulled off 14 league goals, which was almost twice as many as any other player in the history
121. 9:51of the club and even allowed him to reach the podium of the league’s goal scoring
122. 9:55table…. making it all even more special by the fact that, well… he was a big game
123. 10:00player… He literally scored twice in his first ever match against Real Madrid with
124. 10:03two incredible runs that almost made it seem like the other players were stuck to the ground
125. 10:08and as incredible as it may seem, his performances against Barcelona were even better… With
126. 10:12Magico again scoring two goals, but supposedly not only nutmegging Maradona but pulling off
127. 10:17the kind of run even Diego would have been jealous of… and that’s how he found himself
128. 10:24touring with Barcelona… By the end of the season, even if Cádiz had
129. 10:28been relegated regardless… I mean, to be fair, that 16th place was their best finish
130. 10:32ever, but yeah… no matter what happened, after what he had done to Barcelona, they
131. 10:36couldn’t resist giving him a chance, but they also weren’t willing to take a gamble
132. 10:39on such an unpredictable character… so they used their tour as a trial… as long as he
133. 10:44played well and didn’t get in trouble, soon, he’d be lining up alongside Maradona week
134. 10:49in, week out… But as much as the fans claim that watching them play together was like
135. 10:53having two Maradonas on the pitch at the same time… I mean, Diego himself said that in
136. 10:58training they used to try to imitate him and they just couldn’t figure out how to pull
137. 11:00off some of his tricks… Well… you already know things didn’t go well…
138. 11:05On that famous night in the hotel, Maradona supposedly pulled the fire alarm as a prank,
139. 11:10but while every single player and guest in the building ran down immediately thinking
140. 11:13that there actually was a fire, Mágico claims that he somehow knew it was Maradona so he
141. 11:18just never came down… Meanwhile, Menotti, the coach, began a headcount and quickly noticed
142. 11:23he was missing… which led him to force his way past security, going up two floors, knocking
143. 11:27on Mágico’s door, only to eventually find him passed out in bed with two girls lying
144. 11:32next to him… According to one of his biographies, when Menotti inquired him over how he managed
145. 11:37to get them there with all the security around, he replied: “They do say I’m a wizard”...
146. 11:43Regardless, if Menotti was already not the biggest fan of this transfer, after this,
147. 11:47there was no doubt in his mind that Mágico was going back to Cádiz… but can’t stop
148. 11:51thinking that, had Maradona not touched that alarm… Maybe he and Mágico would have had
149. 11:55at least one season together… but no matter what, Mágico wasn’t done with Barcelona…
150. 12:00As the story goes, Before the season even started, Barcelona came down to Cádiz for
151. 12:04the Ramon Carranza cup… and once they met in the semi finals, Barcelona was already
152. 12:083 nil up at half time… However, it was only in the second half that Mágico came on and
153. 12:15now it was time for revenge… 2 goals and 2 assists, and just like that the game had
154. 12:21been turned on its head… It became one of the most infamous stories of Spanish football….
155. 12:26But I’m sorry to inform you, this one is completely fake… Though that match did happen,
156. 12:31it wasn’t a semi final, Mágico didn’t start on the bench and he didn’t score or
157. 12:36assist… Yeah… sorry… I just had to mention the
158. 12:39legend,,, however, he did end up on the bench shortly after that, but it was only because
159. 12:43the new coach, Benito Joanet, could not stand him and thought the fans put up one banner
160. 12:47after the other, with the funniest of all famously reading: “That who doesn’t like
161. 12:51Mágico, doesn't even like his own mother”... it didn't matter… by January, he was already
162. 12:55leaving to Valladolid, who finally got their man, four years after they had first scouted
163. 13:00him… but unfortunately, Mágico did not get along at his new club… He seemed to
164. 13:04constantly miss the city and the people of Cádiz, and after only 9 matches… he was
165. 13:08threatened by the first coach, who told him that he had 15 days to get his game in order
166. 13:12or he’d be sent away so…. before that even happened he disappeared… like literally…
167. 13:17not even he knows exactly what he did, just that months later he woke up in Los Angeles,
168. 13:22with some vague memories of having been in Tijuana… It’s like the Hangover movies…
169. 13:27you know? Regardless, having now hit absolute rock bottom,
170. 13:30he began training with Atlético Marte in El Salvador, trying to get in shape and in
171. 13:34what seemed like a miracle, the manager Carlos Jurado just happened to be friends with Monolo
172. 13:39Carlo, precisely the new manager of Cádiz… and after a lot negotiation, Mágico came
173. 13:45back to the city of his heart… under one condition… or… I guess, dozens of them…
174. 13:51Not only did they force him to visit a psychologist every week, or to have a club employee get
175. 13:55him from his house every morning but they added kinds of clauses, fines and fees to
176. 13:59his contract, trying to get him to settle down… but yet, it never happened… Instead,
177. 14:04according to many sources, over the next few years, they just ended up pretty much not
178. 14:08paying him because every month the total amount in fines would be higher than his wages…
179. 14:12and although that wasn’t the solution they had planned… It kinda worked…
180. 14:16He kept scoring magical goals at a rate none of his teammates could match, and since they
181. 14:20weren’t even paying him, why send him away… I mean, by 87 he led them to what is to this
182. 14:25day their best ever league campaign… Some clubs like Atalanta even gave another go at
183. 14:30trying to sign him… but obviously it never went through… By 89, everyone probably thought
184. 14:36he’d retire there, but instead… it all took a dark turn… when out of nowhere, Jorge
185. 14:42was sentenced to 6 months in jail for… you know… to doing that awful thing I can’t
186. 14:48mention to a young woman in the house of one of his teammates… trust me, it’s hard
187. 14:52to find the details if you don’t speak spanish, but it was pretty gruesome… and though,
188. 14:58the club would strangely decide to keep him around… soon after, he, himself, decided
189. 15:02to flee to El Salvador where he would play until he was 41 before retiring and becoming
190. 15:07a taxi driver… That is what you call a downfall… Crazy to think that everyone thought he was
191. 15:10such a nice guy…