PAULINO ALCÁNTARA
— Juan Fontanet | 04/08/1926 —

Few football players, among those retired and those still active, will have contributed so much and so intensely with their personal efforts to the roots of this beautiful sport among us as Alcántara, that very notable player who since 1910 has been dressing and defending with unparalleled mastery the colors of the F.C. Barcelona.

Because in the same way that one day we wrote that in a European plebiscite on which team should represent us in the event that an "intercontinental" match was reached, undoubtedly the player who would obtain the greatest number of votes would be Ricardo Zamora, for be, at the same time as the best known, the one who has managed to arouse the greatest admiration and interest wherever he has gone, in the same way we want to say today that if in a circle of football intelligent ones one day we were to formulate this question: "Which Spanish player do you consider most qualified and most suitable to run a school to teach football?", Paulino Alcántara would almost unanimously answer.

And it is very difficult to find another player who, like our mentioned, meets those conditions that we consider precise, indispensable, to teach, guide, direct the first steps of those who, motivated by their interests, want to dedicate themselves to football and make a name for themselves.

On more than one occasion I have criticized young people who have insisted on imitating Zamora or Samitier. And I have censored them because I consider it reckless to want to imitate what cannot be imitated, which in addition to leading them to ridicule and failure stifles their own possibilities.

We could say that the improvisations of these two players are to football what Goya is to painting, that is, the exaltation of genius, creative temperaments of beauty that persist in seeking the greatest difficulties within their profession — absolute dominators of it —, to solve them in an extravagant way, if you like, but always beautiful and interesting. This cannot be copied, nor should it be imitated. And this is why you will never see "copyists" in Goya's paintings. They don't dare with them.

Paulino Alcántara, on the contrary, is the utmost perfection within the greatest simplicity of form. Sobriety, study, development of a preconceived plan, of a method that practice and constant training have taught him to be the most effective. Alcántara has never been interested in embellishments in this or that play, he has barely felt for a moment the beginnings of personal brilliance during the course of a match. Rather, he has preferred the sacrifice of his "I", to understand that in a football team, formed individually by men who know their obligation, the key to success is one for all and all for one.

And precisely that conception of the game, that selflessness that we must never tire of pondering to see if it makes sense, has been precisely what made his personality stand out early. Because it is so rare, it has always been, to find a player, and even more so a forward, who is firmly, deeply convinced that the achievement of a goal must be the work of everyone! Let's clarify this. The forward must feel it is his supreme aspiration to score goals. But never believe he is the only one who should mark them. I have already said before that the secret of the great successes of great teams is none other than the mutual support that all their components provide to each other. Remember, if not, Sparta and the Uruguayans, and among us Barcelona in 1922 and Europa in 1923, without dispute the best teams we have ever had.

A team of great players from different clubs would be almost unbeatable as long as its members behaved with simplicity and disinterest on the pitch, but it would be easily defeated by a club eleven if they were determined to play their own game, which might be very brilliant, but would not be at all effective. A case in point: eleven Samitier-style players — a very difficult thing to put together — would never, in my opinion, form a team, while eleven Alcántara-style players would surely form the most formidable team one can dream of.

I will always advise those who want to dedicate themselves to football, in any position on the team, not to try to imitate anyone. May your inspiration spring freely, without prejudice; who knows, they carry within themselves the priceless treasure of a renewal that would otherwise be stifled! But if you want a good boss for your beginnings, you long for a mirror to look at yourself, turn to Paulino Alcántara.

Because in my opinion this is — among the great modern players — the one who has a more simplistic, less complicated style and therefore easier, not to imitate, but to follow. Reaching his degree of perfection is not an undertaking that anyone can undertake; but a mediocrity in his school can always be useful to a team.

I still want to insist on how convenient a player like Alcántara is for a team. He never entertains the game. His speed in conceiving the move to be made is matched by the speed with which he carries it out. Medium players who need not be named in order not to offend sensitivities, have played alongside him like maestros. And he has understood the game and has always prepared and presented it easily, although to do so he had to sacrifice, as I have said before, his personal brilliance.

Of course, in his younger years — and it is not that Alcántara is old — when, full of abilities and passion, he admired even the most recalcitrant opponents of his Club, Alcántara did not limit himself always, always to "giving" his game, but, when he "received" it from his environment or from his companions in a way conducive to personal advancement, he threw himself into it with admirable decision and astonishing confidence. Who has ever forgotten, for example, his lightning-fast escapes, without dribbling, by feet, passing the defender, and smashing his left-footed shots, so difficult to stop? And his volley shots? And his bouncing shots? And those precise changes of play, to the outside right, that hardly anyone tries today, routine slaves to the pass to the winger or the centre, when not to the slow and complicated personal advance? And two forward passes, ‘of death’ we used to call them, that put the ball between the defenders, easy for the centre-forward to finish?

I will be told, perhaps, that the Alcántara of today is not the one we have just remembered with nostalgia. This is true. But it is no less true that in many games his great conditions are revealed in very meritorious plays. The "quantity" of the game has obviously decreased, but the "quality" is still, at times, unbeatable.

There they are, in the memory of the Catalan, Spanish, French, Belgian, Portuguese fans, in a word, of all those who had the fortune of admiring him, the memory of his great afternoons. There may be someone who equals them, someone who improves them, for now, no.