Questionnaire / Sports

1. What’s the most impressive sporting achievement you have ever seen?

Final of Cup of Europe 1960, I think, in Glasgow: Real Madrid 7 - Eintracht Frankfurt 3. Di Stéfano, 3 goals, Puskas, 4.

2. What was your biggest sporting achievement?

The goals I scored when as a boy I played football. I was number 11, being left-handed, like Gento, Emmerich, Hoenness, Gaínza, Sivori …

3. What was the secret of your success?

I am not aware of any such success.

4. What was your greatest sporting defeat?

When I boxed in school, I once won a match by knocking with my head on another’s boy head. That was dirty trick, therefore a defeat.

5. Your favourite opponent?

I never had a favourite one, but I used to fight, too often, with a boy surnamed Tatay. We rather disliked each other.

6. Your sporting hero?

Real Madrid’s best player ever, Alfredo Di Stéfano. In my opinion, the best football player ever, even better than Pelé, Cruyff, or - no need to say - Maradona.

7. Which single sporting event most captured your imagination or excited you like no other?

I was fascinated by a match in Barcelona, 1982: Brazil 2 - Italy 3.

8. Which result or final score in the history of sports would you change if you could?

Final of Cup of Europe, early sixties: Benfica 5 - Real Madrid 3. I wish it had been the other way round. I was a young boy, and appalled by that score ( "we" started winning 0 -2!)

9. What event would you make an Olympic sport if you had the power to do so?

None, there are far too many "Olympic sports", a real bore. But perhaps poker, a game I usually play.

10. Which sport makes you switch off the set when it’s broadcast on television?

Pelota vasca ( Basque Ball?), a terrible bore.

11. Which sport would you like to be able to play well or perform well?

Salto de pértiga ( I don’t know the name in English) and horse- racing ( I would not mind being the horse)

12. What was your best sport in gym class at school?

I was very fast, I won most races at school.

13. What was the last piece of sporting equipment that you purchased?

I never buy any.

14. How would you describe your current state of physical fitness?