Spain arrives this Wednesday in Gelsenkirchen to play this Thursday against Italy (9:00 p.m., La1), 14 years after the first Spanish footballers appeared at the Schalke 04 stadium. The summer of 2010 brought an unusual turn for a Real Madrid legend and of the selection. At 33 years old, Raúl signed for the German club. His hiring attracted two compatriots, José Manuel Jurado, now retired, and Sergio Escudero, who plays for the recently promoted Valladolid.
For Escudero (Valladolid; 34 years old) it was like a trip to the Moon: “I finished the season with Murcia, in the Second Division, I was 20 years old, and my representative asked me if I would go and live an experience outside of Spain, at Schalke 04 “Raúl had signed, so I didn’t think about it,” recalls the footballer who played for Getafe and Sevilla, with whom he won the Europa League twice. “I was super excited. Raúl had played for Madrid all his life, in the Spanish team… Everything he was…”.
And he moved to that small city in the Ruhr basin, the former European coal capital, “the city of a thousand fires” because of the forest of columns of smoke that grew from it. In 2000 the last mine was closed. Heavy industry plants have also disappeared, now parks and cultural centers. Gelsenkirchen wants to be a solar energy center, but the Germans say that in reality it only exists in the collective imagination because Schalke exists, now in the Second Division. Escudero remembers that to entertain themselves they went to the nearby, and larger, Essen and Düsseldorf, where Raúl settled.
The blame for everything was Metzelder, who moved there tired of not playing for Madrid. They needed a striker and he told the coach, Magath, that the number 7 was not happy at the Bernabéu. “I returned to Madrid and in the locker room I spoke with Raúl from Schalke. And in the end he came,” the center-back said years ago.
The effect of his figure was instantaneous, as Escudero remembers: “As soon as he arrived they made him captain and gave him the nickname ‘Señor Raúl’. Although it was hard for them, that’s how the speaker presented him.” But the impact was not just symbolic. He “tried to help his teammates, especially in the field, commanding and trying to position people,” with gestures and in English. With Escudero he worked in a special way: “I was very young and he helped me a lot,” remembers the full-back. “He knew what this was about and I had just started. In training, if he saw that there was something I wasn’t doing well, he explained to me: ‘Look, try to position yourself this other way, or profile yourself this other way, or hit it long more times…’. He already liked being a bit of a coach.”
The first season they won the Cup and reached the semifinals of the Champions League. The second, they lifted the Super Cup at the beginning of the course. In June the Spanish adventure in the Ruhr basin ended with a heartfelt farewell to Raúl, a legend there too. The stadium was filled to see him leave, and that day 8,000 t-shirts were sold with the inscription: “Thank you, Raúl”, in Spanish.
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