José Luis Garci (Madrid, 1944) tells life like no one else, whether through his Oscar-winning gaze or his enveloping words. His football is the one that smells of liniment and a dirt field, but also that of Simeone, Mbappé and Lamine Yamal. Although, given the choice, I always box. Nobility obliges.—Football, athletics, boxing and cinema. Order them, by preference.—Impossible. You would have to add music and painting.Related News standard Yes Fans Ferran Adrià: “I always want Madrid to lose” María José Hostalrich standard Yes Football Lorenzo Caprile: “I admire Del Bosque for being an example of consistency” María José Hostalrich—I knew that He wasn’t going to make it easy for me.—I come from a family in which what is now called popular culture was normal. I could go to the boxing to see Galiana and to the Prado to see Velázquez. Read a comic or ‘Journey to Alcarria’. Sometimes I feel like watching a good football game. Other times, read a good hardcover book.—Make an effort and choose.—Athletics, for me, remains fundamental. I don’t miss a European championship, a Spanish championship, or the Olympic Games. As a kid, he ran 1,500 meters at the University. It was very bad. Once, I went under 5 minutes. I was taking a shower and the locker room manager, not knowing that I liked it, told me: ‘boy, go into movies.’ I listened to him.—Do you still plan your agenda around football?—Yes. We are experiencing an invasion of idiots who give you a meeting on such a day and you say no, because Madrid, Atleti or Barça are playing, and they get upset. I am already in a world without meetings. Football, for me, is important. A reflection of what my life has been, the place where I was born.—When Scorsese finished ‘Raging Bull’ he said something like he had emptied himself so much that he had to look for a new way of living. It happens in football too.—Scorsese had had a bad time. For him, the film was the solution. ‘Raging Bull’ is a horror movie, not a boxing movie.—And football, sometimes.—It’s more violent every day. I’ve been to boxing and, in 70 years, I haven’t seen a single fight outside the ring. At concerts and at games, I have seen stab wounds. The nobility of boxing seems admirable to me.—Why do you always compare Atleti with the eternal loser that Bogart represents in the movies?—Because of the fascination of the loser. I have been a childhood member of Madrid, even though I have more sympathy for Atleti, in that post-war Spain, in which everyone wore white and Atleti wore stripes. I’m also from Sporting.—Rojiblanco and good vibes with Madrid?—I like football. People only like their team to win, not enjoy it. He doesn’t watch the game. He is waiting for his team to score a goal. I have never screamed on a football field. I never heard it from my father.—Let’s go back to Bogart and Atleti.—Atleti, for many years, has been like the representative of black cinema. Romantic fatalism: Milan, Lisbon, formerly Brussels. Many losses. Always in overtime.—Define romantic fatalism for me.—It is the fascination in defeat. I have lost but I don’t feel bad. And defeat is worse than death. Because you drag it all your life.—Many have not even been able to lose.—Living with Madrid and its winning gene is what it has. In one of my films, I gave Jesús Puente a dialogue that said: «In this life everything fails you. You fail your family, your children fail you, your wife fails you…the only one that doesn’t fail is Real Madrid.”—Anyway, now, the script changed.—People have no idea. Madrid has just won the League and the Champions League. Their people are used to always having to win and that doesn’t work that way. But being from Madrid you are assured, every year, of 80% happiness.—In Barça, what cinematographic category do you put it in?—It’s classic cinema. He has always played football very well. With a lot of class. Now he has been lucky that, being broke, he has had to look to 16-year-old boys who are playing football full of enthusiasm and faith.—And Ancelotti looking for a successor…—The fanatic, not the lover about football.—What do you not like about Atleti?—They play in an old-fashioned way. I see Benfica, Sporting Lisbon, they play differently. But for Simeone, his players do anything. You see players finish games exhausted. And now, he has injected his son’s gene. He fights, he doesn’t give up a ball. Atleti is a mystery. There is no more mysterious team. There’s no telling what it can do. That’s why it’s so attractive.—Who is going to win the League?—I think, since I saw them start the season, it’s Barcelona. Play differently.—Flick is the miracle man.—It’s nice that a German comes and tells them to forget about tiki-taka, makes them run like in his Bayern, without giving up a ball for lost and, since they are very good, convincing them that they are not going to have problems with the deep pass or anything like that.—What do you think of the phenomenon Ilia Topuria?—I have not seen him box, but I think he will end up doing that. He seems admirable to me, but in Spain we have had world boxing champions and those successes were not even recorded. We experienced something similar to what happened with Urtain, who came out and had a special character. I watch boxing more. I don’t like sticking to the ground. The rules of boxing seem more noble to me.—I don’t see him as combative as other defenders of boxing.—What with Topuria is a wilder thing. But this boxer is a star and what he creates around him is spectacular. By the way, let’s see if we can get rid of the complex here in Spain with boxing: this sport just brought in 90,000 people in Wembley.—The best boxing match of his life.—Joe Frazier against Cassius Clay, in Manila, the last of the trilogy. At the beginning of the fifteenth round, Frazier’s trainer, Eddy Futch, tells him: ‘boy, no one is going to forget what you did here today.’ And Cassius Clay answered: ‘If you get up, I’ll die.’ I can’t take it anymore. It is the hardest fight I have ever seen, terrible, but the most technical.—The best soccer match.—The second leg of the Intercontinental Cup final between Madrid and Peñarol. The first half of Madrid… I have not seen better football played in my life. —You are nostalgic.—I always talked about it with Manuel Alcántara that, if heaven exists, it has to be very similar to watching a match between Brazil in ’58, with Pelé, Garrincha… and Madrid in the third European Cup. Or the Fifth. Even see a Cassius Clay-Tyson. And I would have loved to see El Guerrouj compete against Clarke or Aouita.
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