Joaquín Sánchez hangs up his boots after 23 years of professional career. At the age of 41, the talented winger born in El Puerto de Santa María, “la finta y el sprint”, has made a decision officially released by the Verdiblanco club in a video in which he compares his colorful football with joy, art and the genuinely Andalusian emotion that have surrounded his entire career.
«Life is a constant evolution and the secret is the ability to adapt to changes. For 23 years I have tried to make my football an art and to be remembered from generation to generation, from the classic to the contemporary. Now all that remains is to hang up my boots, my art. A window into eternity”, Joaquín says as he goes through several rooms full of canvases, like the ones that for more than two decades on the grass, through the brush of his right boot, he has left on the retina of the fan.
It was an expected decision, although Joaquín’s state of form still invited him to extend a prolific career like few others. Betis loses a captain, one of its most iconic footballers, but gains a legend who will forever be in the pantheon of verdiblancas deities.
Two Copa del Rey titles, 14 campaigns as a Betic player in two stages and almost half a thousand games wearing the 13-bar shield mark a career that transcends the pitch. Joaquín has been much more than a talented player who spent, in addition to his beloved Betis, Valencia, Málaga and Fiorentina, and who came to play 51 games with the Spanish team, with which he participated in two World Cups and one Eurocup (Portugal 2004).
In the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan he became an icon. His unmistakable wit and wit won over Asian fans who were seeing the great soccer stars live for the first time. Feints, bicycles, dribbling and those classic gallops well attached to the line of right lime, old-fashioned, delighted the Far East.
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That summer love came to an abrupt end, in that duel against South Korea in the quarterfinals that more than two decades later continues to pinch the hearts of Spanish fans. Precisely a cross by Joaquín, finished off by Morientes and annulled for exceeding the end line, something that never happened, is the symbol of the controversial arbitration by Egyptian Gamal Al-Ghandour that ended the illusion of Spain.
The boy from Porto who entered the Betis categories in 1997 became the watchword of the Heliópolis club in those early years of the 21st century. He won the Copa del Rey title against Osasuna at the Vicente Calderón in 2005, the Verdiblanco’s first trophy in 28 years, and the following year the Champions League anthem resounded loudly at the Benito Villamarín.
Valencia, his second home
The succulent offers from the European aristocracy rained down and Manuel Ruiz de Lopera, the generator of a thousand and one funny anecdotes, threatened a loan to Albacete, including a car trip to La Mancha for the player. Finally, after many twists and turns, Valencia won the bid for the talent of Joaquín, who started off on the right foot at Mestalla, enjoyed the Champions League and won another Cup in 2008 along with players of the stature of David Villa, David Silva or Juan kill.
The instability of his last years in an institution with volcanic idiosyncrasies led him to Sheikh Al-Thani’s galactic Málaga in 2011, and later, in 2013, after the collapse of the pharaonic Qatari project on the Costa del Sol, to Fiorentina. Florence and Renaissance art, a good destination before heading home.
When in 2015 Joaquín Sánchez donned the shirt with the shield of the 13 verdiblancas bars again, he was already 34 years old. His Betis had just returned to Primera after a traumatic descent and was far from aspiring to the heights of yesteryear. It seemed like a placid decline but the truth is that a stage of eight seasons began in which the Betic captain has been breaking down longevity records as the Heliópolis team grew to play up to three times in the Europa League and win the third Cup of the King of his story.
It was an unforgettable night in April for Sevilla Betic, who once again touched the sky at the La Cartuja stadium in the Andalusian capital. Joaquín raised that trophy, the symbol of an inexhaustible career that is now coming to an end. «Oh, that magical night at the end of April in which I was able to fulfill a dream. How fast time flies”, recalls Joaquín, excited.
As a footballer, he still has one last challenge ahead of him in the remaining nine league games, as Joaquín announces his goodbye to football with 615 First Division matches to his credit, seven shy of the record that Andoni Zubizarreta has held since 1998. He would be a beautiful epilogue to a player who, beyond his perennial smile and his unmistakable jokes, has been an example of professionalism and values throughout his career. Then another stage will open, promising in the field of television, where this genuine ingenuity is already a classic on the small screen. Beyond football there is Joaquín for a while.
2023-04-20 12:25:41
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