The first galactico

Luis Figo is often accused of hogging the ball. That may also be taken as a compliment. To play at the highest level of the game and be able to keep possession of the ball as persistently as he can is a sign of greatness.

During the game last month at the Camp Nou stadium between Barcelona and Real Madrid he kept the ball at his feet for such long stretches that — beyond selfish — it was plain disrespectful. He was guilty of the most shockingly insulting behaviour towards his rivals, players and fans alike. Which was precisely his objective.

Barcelona fans will never forgive Figo for selling his soul to Real Madrid in the summer of 2000. The fee was a then world-record sum of £40-million. Roy Keane, a big admirer, was not alone at the time in remarking that it was cheap at the price. Other players have defected from Barcelona to the old enemy, but none was so esteemed.

On his first return to the Camp Nou, dressed in white, six months after what the Barca faithful consider to be the vilest act of treachery ever perpetrated, one of the banners greeting Figo read: ‘We hate you so much because we loved you so much.”

Hate rained down on him that day from the 100 000 souls at Europe’s biggest stadium, and it has not abated in the four games since. Last year, more than hate, they threw all manner of missiles each time he went to take a corner, including a bottle of whisky and the head of a suckling pig.

Before last month’s rematch at the Camp Nou it was judiciously announced that David Beckham would be the corner taker. In the event, when the first Madrid corner was awarded, Figo raced to take it himself.

It was an act of almost heroic defiance: each time he touched the ball a packed crowd raised a collective jeer suggestive of 10 jumbo jets in full, screeching, pre-take-off roar.

And then, as if asking the crowd to do their worst, came the ball-hogging, the twisting this way and that with the ball seemingly tied to his bootlaces, in a spectacle that made mockery not only of his Barca tormentors but of the whole concept of football as an association game. Beckham, perhaps recalling how he was once abused by crowds in England, must have marvelled at the brazenness of it all.

Figo, who will have revelled more than anyone in Madrid’s 2-1 victory that night, is a man of unusually strong character. He has needed to be in Spain, where season after season he has been consistently the most fouled player. That is the price you pay, as his footballing hero Diego Maradona discovered before him, for being so good.

An only child born into a respectably off family in Lisbon (his father owned a bar; his mother worked as a seamstress), he was identified as a potential superstar at age 12. Four years later he was playing first division football for Sporting Lisbon.

Since Johan Cruyff signed him for Barcelona, in 1995, he has been consistently the world’s best winger. Almost as strong with his left foot as with his right, he has won both the world and European footballer of the year awards and, after Zinedine Zidane, he is the second-most expensive player in history.

He is, at 31, destined to be a dominant figure in the world game this year for two main reasons. First, because as we approach the knockout phase of this season’s Champions League he plays for the favourites to lift the trophy in May, the club with the most complete monopoly on contemporary talent ever seen; and second, because he is the captain and talisman of the Portugal national team, who have not quite been the sum of their parts in recent years but, helped by home advantage, are among the favourites to win the European championship this summer.

I arranged to meet Figo at a hotel outside Lisbon, where he was staying with the Portugal squad before a recent friendly against Greece. Arriving early, I see him in a lounge, just off the lobby.

He is watching television with a group of teammates and, from the pointing, gesticulating and general air of hilarity, it is apparent that they are watching themselves on the news. But Figo, who is sitting on the best chair in the room with his legs stretched out, registers no emotion at all.

The public persona the captain of Portugal projects off the pitch could not be more different from that of the captain of England. Beckham is sunny and uncomplicated; Figo, dark and brooding. Beckham loves the stage lights; Figo avoids them. Melancholia is his natural, resting expression.

Young players freshly arrived in the national squad are known to find him intimidating. But what makes the effect all the more forbidding is that Figo, who, unusually for a footballer, loves reading books, contemporary novels chiefly, is a man apart, self-involved, seemingly absorbed in gloomy contemplation.

There is a story that is told about how a debutant in the Portugal team made the mistake of taking the seat in the team bus where Figo always sat. The other players deliberately did not let on. Instead, they waited, excited, to see what would happen when Figo arrived. In the event, Figo responded with wry amusement, when what everyone had expected was indignation.

What the anecdote reveals, however, is just how much in awe his Portugal teammates are of a footballer who is a national institution at home, quite as much as Beckham is in Britain. They used to call him the Lion King when he was at Barcelona. He is that, all right — the undisputed leader of the pack.

In Portugal, Figo is such an institution that if, for example, the king of Spain comes on a state visit, the presi-dent will invite him along. So popular that when elections come around, the whole country waits eagerly to see whom he will publicly support.

In the last national election he gave his endorsement to a Socialist candidate. When he failed to give it to the Socialist in the more recent election for the mayor of Lisbon there was an outcry. There, quite clearly, all comparisons with Beckham’s influence on British public life end.

Slowly, and with no attempt to disguise his reluctance, he lifts himself from his seat in the TV room and leads me to a stark room where we spend the next hour talking. We speak in his second language, Spanish, but it could just as easily have been his third, English, in which he is also fluent.

Figo is one of a number of star players in Spain who periodically mentions playing in Britain. Ronaldo said as much again last month. Barcelona’s Patrick Kluivert is always saying it.

This is rather surprising since the prevailing view down the years in Britain, among those not blinded by tabloid jingoism at any rate, has been that the national game there is rather rustic and slapdash compared with the refined version on view in Spain and Italy.

‘Yes, but there is a tradition and a culture in English football — an intensity in the way fans follow the game — that is special,” says Figo. ‘The Spanish relate to the football spectacle in a very different way. In England, you can be losing 2-0, 3-0, and the fans are still cheering on their team.

”In Spain, it would be the opposite; they would be jeering. This is not to criticise. It has to do with different cultures, different ways of being.”

Florentino Perez, the Real Madrid president, never ceases to marvel at how, during last season’s epic Champions League quarterfinal, Manchester United fans applauded the Real players, especially Ronaldo who scored a hat-trick, even though United never looked like winning the game.

‘In Spain that would be inconceivable,” Figo says.

He speaks in a deep-voiced mono-tone, but he is not perfunctory in his replies or self-evidently bored, as other players can be. He volunteers the thought that a particular reason why he himself is attracted to English football is that it had a big impact on him when he was a boy genius, chased by the top clubs in Portugal.

‘In the years when I was getting started in the game it was the English teams who were at the peak in Europe. Those were the days of English domination: the late Seventies and early Eighties. Clubs like Liverpool became my reference point in the game.”

So far so serious. Until, that is, I ask him where in Britain he would like to play.

‘In London!” London?

‘Yes, if you really want to know: London!”

And now he more than smiles: he laughs. A light laugh but, rather revealingly, a laugh all the same.

Sir Alex Ferguson has said in the past that he would fancy Figo in his team; but he would have to stand in the queue behind the Londoners.

‘I like London a lot,” Figo says. ‘And when you have a family [he has two daughters] you have to think of them, too. My first option would logically be there, in London. Because there I would be able to reconcile … everything. It is not easy both to play in a big prestigious club and live in a great city that can be compared with Madrid or Barcelona.”

One Londoner who shares Figo’s belief that Madrid combines the best of both worlds is Beckham. Beckham always played in Figo’s position, out on the right, at Manchester United. The big question, at the start of the season, was would Real be big enough for both of them?

As it turned out, Figo responded to Beckham’s arrival by running and battling for the ball more than anyone else in the Madrid team. He gave the impression that he was trying to make a point.

‘Look, I will explain,” he says, when I ask about Beckham. ‘In football, day in day out, you always have to show your worth. But for me this challenge was nothing new, because I was the first to arrive. Then came Zidane, then Ronaldo, now Beckham.”

His point, I think, was that he was the first of the galacticos signed by Perez when he took over the Real presidency in 2000.

‘As a professional football player, I have known perfectly well from the day I started playing that every day I have to fight for my place,” he continues. ‘I should immediately say that for us it is good that David is with us because he makes us much stronger.

”We are more competitive and better but, yes, in a sense it was one more challenge for me because he is a new teammate and you have to continue fighting to continue playing. But, more than anything else, what drives me is that I play for myself.”

What is evident as he talks is the tremendous pride of a man who refuses to be intimidated by 100 000 people calling him Judas and generally baying for his blood at the Camp Nou.

He wants to be in on the action. He wants to show his stuff. Pride, allied with huge ambition, is his greatest attribute. It is what distinguishes the ordinarily successful player from the superstar.

It is why he has been captain of Portugal since the age of 23; why he says of Portugal’s chances in the European championship this summer that, while there are better teams around, ‘I will fight to the death to win — whatever it takes.”

A friend of Figo’s, the former national team press officer Jose Carlos Freites, says that his amor propio —his self-love — is enormous.

‘That is why I think he talks about going to the Premiership,” Freites says. ‘Some might think he would not fit in, that his tricks — the time he spends on the ball — would not work out. For him, it would be a challenge and something he feels he could overcome.

”I don’t think he will go. For him Real Madrid is the club. He was a big fish at Barca, a bigger fish in the sense that the goals, the plays, the action centred around him. But, for him, it is a challenge to play in a team of big stars. He likes to test himself at the highest level.”

Why Manchester United sold Beckham continues to baffle Figo, as it does all his Real teammates. It must also trouble the directors at Old Trafford just as much as Figo’s departure ended up troubling the board at Barca.

I put it to Figo that he and Beckham are the players that drive Real on when things are tough; when the team is behind with 15 minutes to go and playing away in the cold and the rain. That they are the ones who deliver the furia?

‘Yes,” says Figo, smiling again. ‘You’re right. Neither of us likes to stand still. We are not the tranquil types. I think maybe we are more hot-blooded than the rest of our teammates.”

And warmer off the pitch than he seems, too. People who know him well say that, in private, he is an excellent friend. A nice scene in Mallorca last year, before the final game of the Spanish season, illustrated the point.

Ivan Campo, the Real Madrid reject now playing at Bolton, turned up at the hotel where his former teammates were staying. On seeing the wild-haired central defender, Figo rushed to his old friend, wrapping him in an affectionate embrace.

It is safe to assume that his wife, Swedish model Helen Svedin, sees a fair amount of that side of him too. She is one reason why Figo would like to live in London. She continues to work following the birth of their two daughters; professionally, London would suit her well.

They met, in 1995, at a concert in Barcelona, where they exchanged phone numbers. It was she who made the first call. They fell in love, had a child, got married at a luxury resort in the Algarve, then had another child.

‘Initially,” he says, ‘we spoke in English. Now — she has learnt well — we speak in Spanish.”

Figo, as befits a man with such a wife, is a stylish dresser; he owns the Guess jeans concession in Portugal. But since becoming parents the couple have been wary of publicity.

‘I have a fantastic wife,” he says, ‘and not only in terms of external beauty. Her priority and mine is our children. That is our choice. My wife does work, but not as much as she used to. Before, she would be away for two or three weeks. Now, she turns away work.”

What makes her fantastic? Is it because she is understanding about the relentlessly intrusive nature of the footballer’s life?

‘That is very important. She understands my profession and the time I have to be away from her and the children. I am very happy to have met and married her and I give thanks for every moment she is with me.”

Is this Real Madrid team the best side he has played in?

‘I don’t know,” he says. ‘I am playing with some truly magnificent players, but as to whether this is the best team only time will tell. In terms of individual quality this is the best team I’ve played in. In collective terms — will we continue to win? The balloon has really been inflated and now in what is left of the season we will have to see if we deserve it.”

While caution tempers so much of what he says — that same caution that has counselled him to keep a safe distance between himself and the world — he is generous when defining the attributes of his more prodigious teammates at Real. Though his first comments on Roberto Carlos, the most remarkable left-back in the history of the game, are a little disconcerting.

‘There is no merit in Roberto Carlos,” Figo says. ‘None at all. No merit in his talent as a player … He’s a guy who has been born with everything — his legs, his power, his speed. There is no question of his having to work at his game. It is a question of nature. I repeat: there is no merit in it.

”There are players who have to work to the limit to be at their best, but he doesn’t need to. He doesn’t need any pre-season training to be in top shape. That’s why I say there is no merit, but he is, of course, the best player there is in his position and very happily indeed he is in our team.”

Zidane, voted Fifa World Player of the Year for the third time in six years last month, what does he have?

‘Zidane… Zidane…” For the first time in our interview, Figo struggles for the right words. ‘Zidane has … football!”

He laughs, pleased with the clear-sighted simplicity of his remark.

‘He has huge quality. What defines him is how he makes the transition from defence to attack and for that what matters is his control, which is extraordinary. What more is there to say?”

As for Ronaldo, he says: ‘That’s simple. He blends power, quality and finishing.”

Does he resent Ronaldo’s languor and reluctance to tackle back?

‘A forward does not like to have to defend. If I didn’t do it, I’d probably have a lot more strength going forward, but I have to do it. But I also understand the particular characteristics of Ronaldo. Obviously we understand what kind of a player he is and so, no, it’s no problem.”

And what about himself? How does he rate his own game three or four years — by his own reckoning — away from retirement?

‘I’ve always played in the last third of the pitch, but at Madrid I play more as a sort of wing-half, operating in more areas of the game.”

Is that why he gives the impression these days of running more than he used to at Barcelona, for example?

‘Yes,” he laughs, ‘I think that’s right. I should run less now that I am older. But I think what happens to us is that each season there is a greater competitiveness and a greater equality in football and you have to work more.”

Is he still improving as a player, even at the age of 31?

‘Yes, you always can. Every day. In every aspect of the game, including the technical aspects.”

Striking the ball better after all these years?

‘Yes, if you spend all day striking the ball logically you will do it better all the time.”

So he strikes the ball better than he did, say, five years ago?

‘Yes, probably, yes.”

Judging from his performance in Real Madrid’s last game of 2003, he is not deceiving himself. Madrid clinched a 3-1 victory away to Mallorca despite most of the players hardly breaking into a trot, their minds apparently more on the impending Christmas break than on securing the three points that would keep them top of the Spanish first division.

The exception was Figo who, in the absence of an injured Beckham, was — as they say in Spain — ‘the lungs” of the team. He also exhibited his class in all its range: an extraordinarily feathery first touch, a deceptive ease in getting past defenders and impeccably lethal crosses.

He created four great chances and scored one goal himself. As for Ronaldo, his goal was the living expression of Figo’s definition of his talent: ‘power, quality, finishing”. He collected the ball 36m from goal, raced and jigged his way past three defenders and then tucked it away in the only space, about one metre wide, which the goalkeeper had not quite managed to cover.

For the very best players in the game — Thierry Henry, Ruud van Nistelrooy — that would have been a rare wonder goal. Ronaldo scores one of those every couple of weeks.

Despite such potency in front of goal, despite having the planet’s best players — six out of the top 11 in the Fifa world player awards — and despite playing, at their best, the fastest, most fluent football there is, Real Madrid do not always play well and certainly do not always win.

For the team consistently to replicate, for example, the symphonic performance against Manchester United in the first half of last season’s match at the Bernabeu, in which Figo himself scored a gem of goal, is perhaps to ask the impossible, especially as they followed victory over United by losing to Juventus in the semifinal.

Despite that defeat and for all their defensive vulnerability, they are again most people’s favourites to win the European Cup (for what would be the fourth time in seven years).

‘Yes, sure, but there are no perfect teams,” Figo says, when I mention that Madrid, the supreme artists of the contemporary game, are less compact than the best Italian teams.

‘The mistake is to imagine that perfection is possible when the very idea is unthinkable. On the other hand, while we may not have the defensive capability of Juventus, we have arguments in attack that Juve lack.”

Eight arguments, to be precise: eight players out of 11 committed to attack; while Juventus typically field eight whose primary purpose is to stop the other team from playing. There is a recklessly unpragmatic, art-for-art’s-sake quality to Real Madrid; a notion that it’s not worth winning if you are not going to win well, if you don’t combine efficiency with panache.

‘That,” says Figo, ‘is our philosophy and the characteristic of our team and of our players. And, look, it yields results.” —