Joaquin Sanchez has spent most his life crying with laughter. This time he just cried.
Actually, no, that’s not entirely true. How could it be? This is Joaquin, we’re talking about: the cheeky scamp with a grin on his face, a glint in his eye and magic in his boots, the winger with the finta y el esprin, as the PA announcer at Real Betis‘ Benito Villamarin stadium used to put it: the feint and the sprint. The endless jokes, too. The footballer who aspired to art and wanted to crack you up. “The man who made the fans happy,” as his president, Angel Haro, said. “Loved by everyone not just for his qualities as a player but as a human.”
And so on Thursday when he announced his farewell to football, joined by teammates, family and friends, an event that might have felt like a funeral instead went like a wedding. Of course there were a lot of laughs, but here were a lot of tears too. “I don’t want this to be a sad goodbye; I don’t know how to do sad,” Joaquin said; only a few seconds later he was crying again, and so were they. It was not the last time. Loosen your tie, he was told. Yeah, good idea, he replied.
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This came as a surprise to them too: they had thought the 41-year-old was going to go on. But he had decided. Not, he insisted, because his body can’t take it any more, or even because his mind can’t.
“The time is right,” he said. And so there are nine games left until the end of this, his twenty-fourth season, and then what? He’ll stay at Betis but it won’t be the same. “I’m ready,” he said, but no one really is. “The thing I am worried about is missing it more than I realise: the smell of wet grass, the smell of the dressing room, of boots.”
“It’s going to be strange,” his daughter Salma said, not really knowing what else to say.
As Joaquin walked into the room, impeccable in a blue suit, he was given a guard of honour by his teammates, applauding him in. There was the warmth of a wedding, the feeling of one too, right down to the photos at the end with different groups: Joaquin with wife and daughters, Joaquin with mum and dad, Joaquin with teammates, Joaquin with the president, Joaquin with the captains, Joaquin with the whole squad, even Joaquin with the journalists.
👑ðŸ˜ðŸ’”
The end of a beautiful journey.#Joaking pic.twitter.com/OEjuSRE1do
— Real Betis Balompié (@RealBetis_en) April 20, 2023
There were speeches: from the president, the captains, his coach. “What can I say about this guy?” Betis midfielder Andres Guardado said. So he said what everyone did really: top man, this man. There were speeches from his agent, from the coaches who saw him through as a kid, from the team delegate Alexis Trujillo, and Betis legend Rafael Gordillo. Sitting at the front together, mics in hand, telling stories and giggling away, those two were like a comedy double act.
Joaquin’s wife Susana and children came up. He went and helped his elderly father Aurelio to his feet, leading him gently, carefully, lovingly, to the stage, sitting with his arm around him gazing at him, crying again. Brother Ricardo joined them. Ricardo had been in the Betis youth system before him. He was better than Joaquin too, at least that was what Joaquin tried to get his dad to say, winding him up; this time, he didn’t. What Aurelio did say was: “Joaquin was always mad about football. He has a big heart and he’s a good person and he’s a cachondo mental.” A funny bastard, a bit of a lunatic.
Through the window: the training pitch, perfect in the sunshine. Behind it, the stadium. Asked what he saw when he looked out there, Joaquin said: “my life.” And then he cried again.
It is a lot of other people’s lives too, and this is what makes it matter most. For lots of people it really is an entire lifetime. Remember when he wasn’t playing? Probably not. Allow a little indulgence here: he is the only footballer spanning this columnist’s entire career, the last man left, something ending right here in this room in Seville. “This is hard, s–t,” teammate Sergio Canales said. “You made us all emotional. We’re going to feel your absence a lot.”
No one ever played more for them; no player ever represented them more either. “Joaquin is Betis,” the president said.
Joaquin always attributed his longevity and his strength to the fact that he was breastfed until he was six. The fact that he said so, that he laughed about it, said something about the other reason he lasted so long. “He enjoyed life,” one of his coaches says, fondness glowing from every word, “and for all that he was an icon he never, ever acted like it. He helped everyone, made the dressing room a better place, looked after everyone, and was serious when he needed to be.”
Having a laugh didn’t mean not working; it meant working better. You don’t play in primera almost to your 42nd birthday just because you’re funny. It didn’t mean not trying. He was counter-cultural: he broke the barriers, the absurd assumption that a sportsman has to be super serious, that a smile was a problem, a symbol of frivolity. Football is supposed to be fun.
With Joaquin it was; he made football better, for everyone. If not always for him: at times, he is sure, it counted against him; the silliness, the jokes, the messing about, the dancing and the daftness, projected an image of him that didn’t always help. Suspicion from managers which was unfounded according to those who worked with him, especially later.
“It has been an honour to coach him twice,” Pellegrini says. His Spain career, certainly, was shorter than it might have been, and that was a thorn in his side. His moment was a painful one: the missed penalty at the World Cup in 2002.
