Every time Barcelona and Estudiantes de La Plata meet – as they will next Tuesday – it will be inevitable to relive that famous match on April 29, 1971, which ended in victory for the Guayaquil team with the legendary goal of the Basque priest Juan Manuel Basurko (1944-2014 .), who wore the gold and crimson shirt of Ídolo del Astillero.

With disgusting Creole cannibalism, spiced with hatred of history, the only place on planet Earth where dissonant voices are heard trying to denigrate this event that has become the most famous and original episode in the history of the Copa Libertadores is Ecuador. They are guys coming out of the gullet poisoned by envy or hatred produced by myths once full of glory, faced with the present that has lost the charm of the football game of men passionate about their currency, deprived of mercantilist woes and ready to give up all his efforts in search of victory. They were not blinded by tactics, but respected order; their strategy was to play, but they also knew how to run. Lecaro, Saldivia, Spencer, Bolaños, Muñoz, Coronel, Paes made the ball an object of enjoyment and imbalance, closer to the essence of football.

The newspaper El Día, from La Plata, the day after Barcelona’s triumph that ended at the Estudiantes stadium unbeaten in the history of the Cup, described the day as a feat. It was not the special envoys of Guayaquil journalism, nor those of us who were in newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, who gave that name to such a resounding victory. The event crossed the borders of the countries of the leading clubs and soon juicy chronicles appeared all over America. Hours later, the feat of La Plata, as the Argentines called it, caused stormy reactions in Europe, especially in Spain, Italy and England.

What were the causes of the universalization of Barcelona’s triumph against Estudiantes? We could name many. Argentine football began to be practiced in 1867; it was only introduced in Ecuador in 1899. In 1893, Alexander Watson Hutton founded the Argentine Football League Association, a turning point in the Argentine structure of organized sports. In Ecuador, the National Sports Association of Ecuador was founded in 1925, which was in charge of organizing football. In 1904, the first foreign club to compete with local teams arrived in Argentina: Southampton, an English team from the first league. The arrival of the first foreign club in Ecuador took place in 1926: Gimnástico Arturo Prat, from Chile. Estudiantes de La Plata was born in 1905, while Barcelona was founded only in 1925. The club from La Plata won its first title in 1913; Barcelona were champions for the first time in 1950. Argentina won their first South American title in 1921. Ecuador first attended these events in 1939 and to date have never been champions. Argentina was runner-up at the first World Cup in soccer, in Uruguay in 1930; Ecuador attended the event for the first time in 2002.

We could refer to many episodes and figures to show the great difference between Argentine and Ecuadorian football, but the most important detail between the two clubs was that Estudiantes was the current three-time Libertadores champion and was the intercontinental monarch in 1968, defeating Manchester United. Barcelona faced this team full of world fame in their first appearance in the semi-finals of the Cup.

Another historical factor was the disdain with which the Argentinian press viewed this latecomer in the history of the Cup. El Gráfico, a well-known magazine, called Barcelona a “third-rate team” and denied them any chance of victory. El Día, from La Plata, in the edition of April 29, commenting on what he called a “decisive move”, referred to our Barcelona as follows: “(…) Ecuadorians believe in achieving what is for the majority of the whole world appears as a kind of football miracle: taking 57 points and 1. Of course, the aspiration sounds too big for their capabilities, since – objectively speaking – they are a team with little potential, barely discreet technique and numerous and essential shortcomings. . Outside of their own country, we honestly don’t see them as risky opponents for any team with pretensions, much less a team with the training and international experience of Estudiantes. Today the forecasts show that Estudiantes should win with great ease”.

And the ‘miracle’ happened, apparently by God’s intercession, because the winning goal for the Guayaquil team was scored by a Spanish priest who changed habits for his football team and his ‘blessed boots’ every Sunday. The reaction of the Argentine public, after the first moments of astonishment, was indignation towards their team and recognition of the Barcelona players. In El Día itself, a columnist using the pseudonym Mercurio stated on April 30, 1971: “I saw local addicts crying in pain, while the yellow girls did it with joy in various sectors of the field (. . .) The same public from La La Plate, albeit with bitter and chattering words like: catastrophic, incredible, terrifying, seems like a story, etc., applauded a group of Ecuadorian enthusiasts. He regretted, of course, that the slump affecting the red and white set-up was so general. There are people who have lost their self-confidence, and others the skill and concept of the bow”.

That great Uruguayan journalist, based in Argentina, Diego Lucero, published on May 2, 1971 in Clarín of Buenos Aires a significant article entitled “God (and Basurco) with Barcelona”, which says: “Students do not know more than Who Knows . He is like a cricket: he has only one string on his violin. And all that was left of his desire to fight and win he lacked talent. The result: that at the start the game was won by a naughty patch. And if he does not get confused , instead of one, there could have been two goals when, in possession of the ball and having a teammate set up to score, he preferred to play an individual game and lost”.

The Copa Libertadores has many notable episodes, some of which are polished by legend, such as Peñarol’s victory against River Plate in 1966, in the final played in Santiago, with two goals from Albert Spencer. Or that goal by Diego Aguirre at the end of extra time, on October 31, 1987 at the National Stadium in Santiago de Chile, which sealed the Peñarol Cup for the fifth time in its history. But what survives for more than half a century around the world is the feat of La Plata. Despite the long time that has passed, important media and prestigious journalists continue to write about Barcelona, ​​​​Basurko, Spencer, Bolaños and company (still featured in La Vanguardia, 2014; El País, 2018; and Mundo Deportivo, 2021) .

Barcelona were not champions of the Libertadores, but while few in the world remember the teams that won the trophy, the feat of La Plata and the goal of the priest Basurka have Nobel Prize fame and permanence in general history. (OR)