Barcelona“Sami!, captain of Barcelona… with your game, which moves, you have made us shudder… Sami!, bearer of the nobility of your land of greatness… gentleman Samitier!”
They say that Josep Samitier cried when they told him that far away, in Medellín, Carlos Gardel had died in a plane crash in 1935. They had a lot in common. Two artists who broke hearts and fascinated thousands of people. Both symbols of a generation, both spearheads of two mass phenomena: football and music. And two friends. When Gardel was seen in Barcelona singing tangos, he used to end up on the premises of Avinguda Paral·lel with Samitier, already one of Barcelona’s best-known people. With Samitier began the golden age of Barça and Catalan football. Until the arrival of Kubala, his name was the most revered in the great book of Barcelona. Samitier, who died 50 years ago, on May 4, 1972, is, together with Pep Guardiola, the most important Catalan in the history of a club where it doesn’t matter where the teachers come from. They can be Hungarian, Dutch or born on Urgell Street, like Sami. To whom Gardel sang that tango where he said his play thrilled. A tango with music by Nicolás de Verona and lyrics by Lito Mas. Samitier, excited, gave the singer a car Graham Piage, as the footballer was also a representative of the brand. Yes, Josep was the first Catalan athlete to be an advertising icon. Samitier, by the way, would be quoted in a second tango by Gardel, Patadura, a humorous tango about a football player without a trace who tries to imitate the best players of the moment. Gardel would leave two versions. One using the names of the best Argentine players of the time, such as Seoane, Tarasca, Ochoita and Monti. And a second one in which he used the names of Barça players. Thus, in the second version of Patadura the names of Piera, Sastre, Ricardo Zamora, Plattko and, of course, Josep Samitier appear.
Born on Urgell Street, Samitier lost his father when he was five years old. And football became the new world of that boy from the Eixample who already saw one of the first football fields in the city through the window. Trained at the International de Sants, Samitier stood out as a goal scorer at a very young age, at the age of 15, when he went from playing on the far right to playing as a center forward. At the age of 17, he signed for Barça, which paid for clothes and a watch with a dial that lit up to take away a footballer who would mark an era. Samitier was already a Barça player at the time thanks to his grandfather, who was one of Manuel Torres’ best friends, in charge of the field on Carrer Indústria. Now, when he received the offer to sign, he hesitated, as he was working to bring money home to the offices of Hispano-Holandesa, an electrical equipment company. On May 31, 1919, he agreed to play a friendly match against a selection of Allied soldiers from World War I. Samitier, who appeared written as Samitier in some chronicles, scored a goal. And the Barça executives visited his mother, Carolina, to finish closing the signing.
Samitier, symbolically, made his debut against footballers who had been soldiers at the front. The Great War ended and we entered the happy 1920s, where Samitier would be one of the best known faces along with his friend Ricardo Zamora, who had also made his debut in the 1919 party against the Allies. Zamora, under the posts, would be a symbol of Espanyol, although he also played for Barça for a few years alongside Samitier. Together they went out partying, made announcements, went to car races and let themselves be seen in musicals and nightclubs. In fact, Sami would recall the 1950s in a newspaper interview Brand, who in the 1920s visited Paris many times. And enjoying the good life in the box which had been inaugurated by actress Gaby Morlay was surprised when one of the singers asked to be approached with a focus. He was one of the players in that 1919 game, which he then played for singer.
Friend of painters and writers
As a Barça player, he won twelve Catalan Championships, five Spanish Cups and a League, the first in history. With 326 goals, Sami is still one of the top scorers in the history of the club and earned the nickname “the lobster man” for his spectacular goals. His fame, in fact, crossed borders, as he was international with Spain: he participated in tours of Europe and won the silver medal at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. One of the most memorable titles would be the final of Cup of 1928, won against Real Sociedad in Santander, a match so violent that Barça goalkeeper Plattko ended up in hospital and Samitier with his head bandaged. The Sami, however, personally accompanied Gardel the next day to visit the Hungarian Barça goalkeeper, to whom the poet Rafael Alberti, the famous poet, would dedicate a poem. There’s Plattko. Samitier always knew how to surround himself with interesting people, at a time when artists, intellectuals, and athletes could go together without snobbish debates separating them. Samitier, in fact, used to spend his holidays in Cadaqués with other players such as Sagi Barba, where they would befriend the Dalí family. Salvador was not so well known at the time, but for years he boasted that he had met the footballers and even played games with them on the beach. The future painter used to act as a goalkeeper and received the goals of a Samitier always tanned. Sami was very presumptuous. It was stated that he always had a room ready in the Hotel Oriente de la Rambla, owned by the Gaspart family. Yes, the lineage that a president would give to the club.
Things of life, Samitier would break the heart of Barcelona, as he signed for Real Madrid. The white club already had its first generation of galactics in the 1930s, when it signed the best Basque and Catalan players to grow up thanks to the money of presidents such as Luis de Urquijo y Landecho, second Marquis of Bolarque, an important banker who would be ambassador to Germany, or Luis Usera, a businessman married to the Countess of Bugallal. The one in charge of signing was a former player of the white club, Santiago Bernabéu, who in 1931 already proposed to Samitier if he wanted to leave for the capital of the kingdom. Sami would end up accepting, as Barça was having a difficult time. A serious injury and tensions with a board in which he did not always like his character and prominence led to the crisis. Then football started to be professional and Samitier earned a lot. Joan Coma, the president of Barça, thought of saving. And Sami was no longer what it used to be. Total, that in 1932, just the summer in which Madrid had won its first league, they gave him the letter of freedom. Injured, Samitier decided to leave for the white club. His friend Ricardo Zamora was already playing in Madrid. Madrid offered him 7,000 pesetas for the transfer and 15,000 for paid seasons. Samitier was already playing at a lower level due to injury, but he won a Cup and a League dressed in white and was loved by the fans. In fact, the 1933/34 League, won by the whites with men like Ciriaco, Quincoces and Zamora, had a high point in Barça’s 2-1 defeat in Madrid … with two goals from Samitier.
In Madrid, Samitier was happy. He went to the first bullfights in the new Las Ventas square, inaugurated in 1934, and met the Catalan actress Margarida Xirgu, who premiered in 1934. barren, by Lorca, at the Teatro Español. Federico García Lorca himself would be seduced by Samitier’s talent. And he didn’t like football. The Sami met actor Maurice Chevalier or writers of the 28th generation, such as José María de Cossío, who admired his play. I had met Rafael Alberti before thanks to De Cossío. In Madrid he met Federico García Lorca, and the poet starred in an incident when he went to Madrid to watch a football match of the Spanish national team against a Czech club in Brno, a match in preparation for a duel against Austria. Lorca wanted to enter the Metropolitan Stadium, but had no entry. And instead of paying, he came up with an idea to try to get in for free. When the stadium staff stopped him, Lorca, naughty, said, “You don’t know who you’re talking to, do you? I’m Samitier! “The game didn’t go well for him, as the field workers knew Samitier, but not Lorca. in the countryside.
Return home after the war
Samitier returned to Barcelona after two years in Madrid, just before the Civil War, when he left for France to finish his career in Nice. With the advent of World War II, he returned home. Samitier, who had not stood out for talking much about politics but was then opposed to Francoism, was debugged by the authorities, who forced him to apologize and declare himself loyal to the new regime if he wanted to work. And he wanted to be the new Barça coach. With his presence on the bench, the team was proclaimed league champions in the 1944-45 season, a title that had been resisted since 1929. From 1944 to 1947 he raised the morale of Barcelona by betting on tactics. 3-2-5 instead of the classic 2-3-5. In addition, he was the first coach to control the diet of his players and made the physical preparation of the first team much more professional. He was also Barça’s technical secretary, and he was the one who signed Kubala: he knocked on the door of the dictator Francisco Franco himself to get the papers to make the Hungarian player. Samitier was one of those people who always got along well with everyone, on both sides. De Franco explains that when asked by Di Stefano, he said: “He’s a good player, but Samitier was better.”
Samitier, who appears in the 1950s film Eleven pairs of boots Along with the Hungarian, he was also responsible for the signing of Alfredo Di Stéfano by Barça in 1953, an operation that ended in frustration because the Madrid authorities moved in favor of Real Madrid’s interests. On this occasion, the Santiago Bernabéu moved the cards better than Barça. With friends all over the world, Sami signed players everywhere, one of them the Brazilian Evaristo de Macedo.
Samitier died in 1972, after a few years in which he was seen every day at the Camp Nou, doing public relations for the club of his life. Along with Ricard Zamora, Àngel Rodríguez –founder of Espanyol–, Ladislau Kubala and Joan Gamper, she is one of the few personalities of Catalan football with a street in the city of Barcelona, right next to the cemetery of Les Corts, where she went be buried next to the Camp Nou. Thousands attended his funeral, with Antoni Ramallets and Ladislau Kubala carrying his coffin.
