Iniesta pays greatest tribute to late friend
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports Sunday, Jul 11, 2010
Follow Dan Wetzel on Twitter at @DanWetzel
(Martin Meissner/AP)
JOHANNESBURG – Day after day as a kid, Andres Iniesta had watched his family work. He was from a tiny village of Fuentealbilla, Spain, where his grandfather owned a small tavern called Bar Lujan.
Everyone from his grandmother to his aunts to his cousins, no matter how young, helped to keep the bar afloat. Even his younger sister Maribel would work. His own father would serve drinks at night after spending all day laboring in “the scaffolds.”
Just one family member was allowed to skip out on the family business – little Andres, whose love of (and acumen for) soccer at an early age was too great to cap.
“It was my best friend,” he said of the sport.
So everyone worked. And Andres played.
Now here he was, 26 years old and with all of Fuentealbilla, all of Spain, all of the world watching as he received a pass in the 116th minute of a scoreless World Cup final. This was the barkeep’s grandson, the construction worker’s kid, the product of the rural working class with a chance to deliver the greatest moment of Spanish soccer glory ever.
[Photos: More images of Spanish hero Andres Iniesta]
He corralled the ball with one touch and then blasted it to the right of the Netherlands’ brilliant goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg.
And with that, a most hard-fought, physical, intense World Cup final was all but over. Spain 1, the Netherlands 0 with Iniesta racing to the corner, ripping off his shirt and displaying a T-shirt with a message honoring another product of hardscrabble Spain.
“Dani Jarque always with us,” it said, a global tribute to a fallen friend who died at age 26 last August from a heart attack while talking on the phone with his girlfriend.
“I wanted to keep Dani with me and with the other teammates,” Iniesta said. “We wanted to pay tribute to him and we thought this was the best opportunity to do so.”
Spain is a gorgeous, exotic nation known for its festivals and beaches and tourism. Its national team prides itself on its precise style of crisp, accurate passing and creative attacks. It was the Netherlands, after all, who felt it needed to rough up the Spaniards to keep Sunday’s game close and offer itself a chance.
Spain is a beautiful country. Spain plays a beautiful game.
And this is why it’s so easy to miss the Andres Iniestas – and Dani Jarques – that make it hum. To not realize the immense economic difficulties its people are suffering through. To forget about the construction workers and family tavern owners and working class people who made it so great for so long.
Spain is about guts too, about tough guys living blue-collar dreams and trying to take their buddies along with them in any way they can. Even the ones who’ve passed away, even if it’s just a name scribbled on a T-shirt.
(Martin Meissner/AP)
For all the dashing glory and all the postcard towns and all the Mediterranean sunsets, it’s a country and a people that believe in hard work and an honest chance.
So when the Netherlands thought it could punch Spain in the nose (or kick it in the chest, which is what Nigel de Jong did to Xabi Alonso) and knock them into a cowering retreat, the Dutch were terribly mistaken. They racked up eight yellow cards in the game by playing a bruising, combative (and smart) style that gave them the best chance to win.
“I would love to win the match even with not so beautiful football,” Netherlands coach Bert van Marwijk said.
And that was fine. And fine with Spain too. Forget the flair; this was about the fight.
“The battle is [what] my players [were] committed to,” Spain coach Vicente del Bosque said.
And yes, they were. The Dutch hit and the Spanish hit back. This wasn’t a one-sided brawl. Spain gave it back as well. And if the game was going to be won ugly, then the Spaniards would find a way to win it. You can underestimate their resolve at your own risk.
It came from a slew of players, guys such as Carles Puyol, the shaggy-haired “Caveman” who despite standing just 5-foot-10 finds himself in the mix on every physical confrontation. It is players such as Gerard Pique, Sergio Ramos and Fabregas, who may not have won every clash but kept coming back for more.
And it was the 5-foot-7 Iniesta, who had spent the night trying to crack all those tall, tough Dutch defenders. The Netherlands game plan expected him to crack or quit or just not having anything left by the time the game got so late and the moments so tense.
Instead, Iniesta did what he always does.
From those days as a kid with potential, Iniesta played the game with a ferocity that comes when you know this is your job, that this is what gets you out of sweeping floors or washing dishes and may keep you from pouring pints and climbing scaffolds later. Iniesta’s father was an excellent amateur player but that’s where it ended. The chance to pursue more wasn’t always there.
When Andres was just 8 years old, his parents increased the sacrifice, making 45-minute drives so he could practice with a better team in a bigger town.
“It was tough on my parents,” he has said in the past. “It was exhausting.”
Along the way in youth soccer development, he came across Dani Jarque, who had a similar background, a similar story and a similar drive.
As a professional, Jarque was the captain of Espanyol. Iniesta is an icon with Barcelona. These are two clubs inhabiting the same city and it produces all the rivalry you can imagine. They weren’t supposed to be friends. Mutual respect brought them together, breaking boundaries that fans didn’t always understand.
You honor those that are working for you, by working for them. You honor friends by never forgetting their love. You certainly don’t quit. They never quit on Iniesta and he’d never consider it now, not in the biggest game of all.
So he found a way to get open in the most desperate of moments. He found a way to get the ball in the net when no other player could. He found a way to help remind the world what Spain is all about – indomitable in the face of the most difficult of challenges.
In soccer. In the streets. In the brunt of a recession.
“This goes beyond sport,” Van Marwijk said.
“We just won the World Cup,” Iniesta smiled.
He won it for his family, his town, his country and his friend, who just like him played the game with not just Spanish grace, but Spanish grit.