/ 21 May 2004

Jesus ascends to heaven

It’s time to say goodbye to one of the game’s great entertainers. For last Friday afternoon, Jesus Gil y Gil died, aged 71. Six days previously, as another case was brought against him and the prospect of a fourth and — at long last — prolonged jail sentence hung over him, Atletico Madrid’s big-bellied, big-hearted and even bigger-mouthed ex-president and majority shareholder suffered a massive stroke. After nearly a week of fighting, his heart could take no more.

Which was rather fitting for the man who, when one fearful radio presenter told him he ought to calm down after having his pacemaker fitted, famously conjured up all sorts of anatomically impossible questions by retorting: ‘They can stick my heart up my arse.”

So it’s rather absurd to footballers, fans and journalists imploring him to rest in peace — for if there’s one thing Gil hated, apart from Real Madrid, and justice, it was peace. Gil go quietly? No chance.

This is the man who once presented his own magnificently tacky TV show, Las Noches de Tal y Tal. In a Jacuzzi. Surrounded by buxom beauties. (Although none quite so buxom as Gil, of course.) A gelatinous karaoke singer, bad-mouther, bull fighter, topless speedboater, Ludo player, always-un-buttoned-shirt-wearer, Real Madrid-baiter and horse-kisser. Everything Gil did, he did brashly and very, very loudly.

It all started back in 1987 when Gil, Atletico socio member 16 386, turned up at Madrid’s Jacara disco for the elections with a famously bewildered-looking Paulo Futre in tow. Luckily for Gil, and comedy lovers everywhere, Futre’s lattice-worked plasticky slip-ons were outweighed by the European Cup under his arm, destabilising him; Gil won by more than 5 000 votes.

In 17 years Gil never let up on the entertainment, going through 39 managers and 141 new signings, getting rid of a youth team containing Raul because there was ‘no point” and no money, attacking a Santiago de Compostela director live on television, and celebrating the team’s double success in 1996 by riding round Madrid on an elephant.

And that’s just the stuff he did do: the plans for a formula one team and aircraft carrier in Marbella harbour never came off. Nor, fortunately, did his live radio wish that the Atletico plane should ‘crash and kill the team” on the way back from a particularly poor performance against Las Palmas.

What did occur was a career in politics — for a while, at least. Designed to protect his own property investments down in playboy-packed Marbella, Gil set up the laughably named Grupo Independiente Liberal (that’s, er, Gil), and won the 1991 council elections by a landslide.

That was followed by three more absolute majorities, mayor Gil using his overwhelming mandate to encourage development, knocking down existing buildings on the way — ever so coincidentally including that of the former mayor, Antonio Parra. He seemed unstoppable, until he was forced to step down in 2002 when the Spanish courts declared him unfit to hold public office.

(Incidentally, his place was initially taken by his lieutenant, Julian Munoz, the man who caused a scandal not by being as bent as a nine bob note but by daring to kiss his girlfriend, Spain’s most famous, sexagenarian widowed flamenco singer Isabel Pantoja in Seville cathedral — which rather says it all about Marbella.)

According to the court, there were €390-million of council cash not sufficiently accounted for and Gil was also found to have ‘misappropriated” more than €30-million from municipal funds in the famous Football Shirts Case (Marbella sponsored Atletico).

And, as he died on Friday, another case — the Caso Atletico, in which he was accused of fraudulently acquiring his 236 056 shares in the club via a flotation that he, as president, oversaw — was just reaching a conclusion.

Those were just a couple of the hundreds of cases brought against Gil, ever since his first little scrape with the law, back in 1968, when he built an apartment complex in Segovia with no plans, no architect and no surveyor. Fifty-eight people died but it didn’t matter to Gil — he got a pardon from a friend in high places. A friend called General Francisco Franco.

Despite the eulogies and messages of respect — including one from the Prince of Asturias, who supports Atletico (but only because his dad told him to) — pouring in, Gil, a crook who consistently escaped punishment should not suddenly be deified.

Nonetheless, the sense of loss as Atletico took to the field against Zaragoza last Sunday was certainly genuine. Gil was buried with an Atletico flag draped around his coffin; few men have so defined a football club — and few clubs have marked so many events in such classic, typical style.

Atletico, the self-proclaimed eternal victims, the people’s team, the comedy, earthy, big-hearted club, the club whose centenary hymn appropriately runs ‘what a way to suffer, what a way to lose”, marked Gil’s passing by almost certainly blowing their Uefa Cup chances with a 2-1 home defeat, thanks to goals in the 91st and 94th minute.

Still, at least they could console themselves by watching rivals Madrid lose a fourth successive match for the first time in their history, by seeing David Beckham end his year with a red card for calling the linesman a ‘son of a bitch” (in Spanish, which was nice to see) and by giggling while Real Murcia — already relegated, bottom-of-the-table Real Murcia — played piggy in the middle with Zinedine Zidane as their fans performed the Mexican wave.

Jesus wouldn’t have had it any other way. —