El taconazo de Toquero
It's been a week since everyone's favorite Lehendakari, Gaizka Toquero, scored the most beautiful backheeled goal I've ever seen against Albacete Balompié, and to mark the occasion, I thought I'd share two great articles about the man himself. Full credit goes to txorakeriak for pointing them out to me and demanding asking very nicely for translations. But before we get started, we should all refresh our memories of just how spectacular that goal was:
Moving on. First up, from El País, a great little article about the goal, and a bit of talk about Toquero's rise to the top.
Toquero, the fighter who admires John Cena
The forward’s goal, a sublime backheel, puts this hardworking footballer back on the altars of La Catedral
Athletic were tangled up in goal problems, after two scoreless matches, one against a team in the 2B division and another against Getafe in the First Division. And everything was weighed down by the absence of Llorente, the team’s point of reference when it comes to goals. Without Llorente, it seemed that the ship was sinking. In fact, some media outlets even began to announce the possibility that Aduriz, in a weakened position at Valencia, could return to Bilbao during the winter transfer window. It all amounted to discrediting Toquero, a forward who scores few goals and has a lot of work, a tireless predator, an annoyance to rival defenders, but without goals. And yesterday, he covered himself in glory. He didn’t just score a goal, Athletic’s third against Albacete, he also did it majestically, with a backheel, a lofty backheel, fully intended to deal with defenders and keeper alike. Let’s face it, he didn’t just do it to get the ball away. He aimed it, and the ball went straight into the net, with the same sort of obedience as other great goals.
Toquero, who came from bronze-level football, joined Athletic from Sestao, a team in the 2B division, in 2007, when Caparrós was searching Bizkaia teams for footballers to sign. The coach from Sevilla was doubtful in the beginning because he thought [Toquero’s] baldness revealed his advanced age. But he was a 23-year-old boy who had lost his hair early. And Caparrós signed him. Due to his origins, his breathless football, his constantly-exhausted appearance, and his sometimes-exaggerated performance, he became the local idol. Idols are not always the best, but the ones in whom the public sees their own attitudes reflected. There are idols for the great afternoons (Iribar, Rojo, Sarabia, Guerrero) and idols for the bad times, when sweat is more appreciated than subtlety. In the latter, Toquero replaces Urkiaga, a fierce fullback capable of crashing against the advertising barriers to chase down an impossible ball. San Mamés is much kinder to the second sort of idol, and much more critical with the first sort.
Toquero, nevertheless, was able yesterday to combine both qualities: hard work and subtlety. And he did it after replacing the greatest idol of all, Fernando Llorente, who is still recovering the form he’s lost after a month on the injured list. From the moment his heel touched the ball, only Toquero’s name could be heard in the stands of La Catedral. And that was taking into account that Susaeta had scored an elegant goal off an elegant cross from Muniain, that Herrera had scored the second with a silk-and-iron touch on a difficult shot, and that the last one to score, Mikel San José, made a prodigious leap to head the fourth goal. It was all Toquero, the return of the lehendakari of La Catedral and the devotee of John Cena, another idol of American wrestling, who plays a Marine character and to whom Toquero pays tribute in his goal celebrations by imitating his gesture with his fingers crossed in front of his eyes. It’s only logical that a born fighter should admire an artistic fighter. They both put on a show, even though only Toquero’s is real.
The second article is based on an interview that Radio Euskadi did with Toquero's mother, Amelia, and we get to hear about what he was like as a kid, and that he is just as awesome at in real life as he is on the pitch. (Which seems to be a recurring theme with our boys, no?)
Amelia, Toquero’s mother, describes Gaizka “at home”
Amelia Pinedo, Gaizka Toquero’s mother, gets very moved when speaking about her son. She cannot find words to express the pride she feels when she affirms that he’s still the same as he was years ago, when he was a child who obeyed his parents without talking back: “He was a very good boy. I had to work at the butcher’s shop and I told him, ‘don’t you wander off playing ball’, and he didn’t move, he could spend six hours playing football. He was the sort of boy who didn’t have to be told anything twice.” Neither fame nor money have changed him. “Thanks to God, that’s what his parents are here for, to give him a slap upside the head when he needs one. But in any case, it hasn’t been necessary,” she says with delight. And that’s even though Athletic fans immediately raised her son to the altars of the Catedral: “Ari, ari, ari, Toquero lehendakari!”. “As much as as it’s so exciting to hear that, at the same time it’s also a lot of pressure, I get very nervous at San Mamés,” she confesses.
She recalls the 2009 Copa del Rey with “a lot of emotion”. “From the semifinal in San Mamés, that’s where it all started, it was terrible,” Amelia tries to describe how she felt for the microphones of Radio Euskadi. But the final exceeded even her wildest dreams. Especially when Toquero scored 1-0. “I went into Mestalla having taken a tranquilizer, and when he scored the goal, it was a good thing I had! It’s a mixture of happiness and pressure, I can’t explain it,” she adds. Gaizka as well as his family are supporters of Ariznavarra, the neighborhood team, “to death”, but since the forward from Vitoria-Gasteiz signed with Athletic, their rojiblanco sentiment has increased: “Of course we all support Athletic, we’re very committed to this club, we owe them so much for believing in him.”
Because the real beginning of the dream that Toquero is living didn’t start with the Copa, but with the signing of his first contract with the club. “The day that Athletic signed him, he left the house, telling me that he was going to have lunch with some friends and he wouldn’t be home until the evening. And it turned out that we went home and on the news we saw that Athletic had signed him. I was glued to the television! But that’s how he is, he never talks about things before they happen, so that he doesn’t cause a fuss at home,” she reveals.
And the truth is, according to his mother, “his character on the the pitch is a reflection of how he is in everyday life. He’s very dedicated, very much so. He’s a hard-working, committed person.” And it could be seen from the time he was a child. “He’s very active, but he was never a child particularly prone to fighting, completely the opposite, he’s always been a very sensible boy, hard-working, not at all egotistical. He’s just like you see on the pitch, he’s very transparent.”
Football has always been his passion. “His father gave him his first ball, he was just three years old, he had just started walking, and he asked us for a ball like the ones that he saw on TV,” Amelia recalls, before adding that, “he never said what he wanted to be when he grew up, but it was clear that everything he liked, he put his soul, his life, his heart into it.” He looked up to Zidane. And he was always very responsible when it came to football: “When he was just twelve, if he had a match the next day, he stayed home, he ate the food they told him to... And when he was older, sixteen, he didn’t go out either. Football always came first.”
It’s an interest that, as he’s gotten older, he’s figured out how to link to another hobby: wrestling. He celebrates his goals with the trademark gesture of one of the wrestlers, as a result of a bet with his group of friends. “He’s watched a lot of wrestling, mostly in the lounge with his friends. (She laughs.) He always celebrates his goals like that, it’s something that he bet on with his friends, so that’s how he keeps doing it. The truth is that [his friends] are his unconditional fans, they go see him as much as they can and they have a lot of fun at San Mamés,” his mother concludes.
I think we can all agree that it's nice to see Toquero finally getting some well-deserved attention - and how! (Apologies for the slightly quick-and-dirty English, though. Pretend it reads better than it does! XD)
Moving on. First up, from El País, a great little article about the goal, and a bit of talk about Toquero's rise to the top.
Toquero, the fighter who admires John Cena
The forward’s goal, a sublime backheel, puts this hardworking footballer back on the altars of La Catedral
Athletic were tangled up in goal problems, after two scoreless matches, one against a team in the 2B division and another against Getafe in the First Division. And everything was weighed down by the absence of Llorente, the team’s point of reference when it comes to goals. Without Llorente, it seemed that the ship was sinking. In fact, some media outlets even began to announce the possibility that Aduriz, in a weakened position at Valencia, could return to Bilbao during the winter transfer window. It all amounted to discrediting Toquero, a forward who scores few goals and has a lot of work, a tireless predator, an annoyance to rival defenders, but without goals. And yesterday, he covered himself in glory. He didn’t just score a goal, Athletic’s third against Albacete, he also did it majestically, with a backheel, a lofty backheel, fully intended to deal with defenders and keeper alike. Let’s face it, he didn’t just do it to get the ball away. He aimed it, and the ball went straight into the net, with the same sort of obedience as other great goals.
Toquero, who came from bronze-level football, joined Athletic from Sestao, a team in the 2B division, in 2007, when Caparrós was searching Bizkaia teams for footballers to sign. The coach from Sevilla was doubtful in the beginning because he thought [Toquero’s] baldness revealed his advanced age. But he was a 23-year-old boy who had lost his hair early. And Caparrós signed him. Due to his origins, his breathless football, his constantly-exhausted appearance, and his sometimes-exaggerated performance, he became the local idol. Idols are not always the best, but the ones in whom the public sees their own attitudes reflected. There are idols for the great afternoons (Iribar, Rojo, Sarabia, Guerrero) and idols for the bad times, when sweat is more appreciated than subtlety. In the latter, Toquero replaces Urkiaga, a fierce fullback capable of crashing against the advertising barriers to chase down an impossible ball. San Mamés is much kinder to the second sort of idol, and much more critical with the first sort.
Toquero, nevertheless, was able yesterday to combine both qualities: hard work and subtlety. And he did it after replacing the greatest idol of all, Fernando Llorente, who is still recovering the form he’s lost after a month on the injured list. From the moment his heel touched the ball, only Toquero’s name could be heard in the stands of La Catedral. And that was taking into account that Susaeta had scored an elegant goal off an elegant cross from Muniain, that Herrera had scored the second with a silk-and-iron touch on a difficult shot, and that the last one to score, Mikel San José, made a prodigious leap to head the fourth goal. It was all Toquero, the return of the lehendakari of La Catedral and the devotee of John Cena, another idol of American wrestling, who plays a Marine character and to whom Toquero pays tribute in his goal celebrations by imitating his gesture with his fingers crossed in front of his eyes. It’s only logical that a born fighter should admire an artistic fighter. They both put on a show, even though only Toquero’s is real.
The second article is based on an interview that Radio Euskadi did with Toquero's mother, Amelia, and we get to hear about what he was like as a kid, and that he is just as awesome at in real life as he is on the pitch. (Which seems to be a recurring theme with our boys, no?)
Amelia, Toquero’s mother, describes Gaizka “at home”
Amelia Pinedo, Gaizka Toquero’s mother, gets very moved when speaking about her son. She cannot find words to express the pride she feels when she affirms that he’s still the same as he was years ago, when he was a child who obeyed his parents without talking back: “He was a very good boy. I had to work at the butcher’s shop and I told him, ‘don’t you wander off playing ball’, and he didn’t move, he could spend six hours playing football. He was the sort of boy who didn’t have to be told anything twice.” Neither fame nor money have changed him. “Thanks to God, that’s what his parents are here for, to give him a slap upside the head when he needs one. But in any case, it hasn’t been necessary,” she says with delight. And that’s even though Athletic fans immediately raised her son to the altars of the Catedral: “Ari, ari, ari, Toquero lehendakari!”. “As much as as it’s so exciting to hear that, at the same time it’s also a lot of pressure, I get very nervous at San Mamés,” she confesses.
She recalls the 2009 Copa del Rey with “a lot of emotion”. “From the semifinal in San Mamés, that’s where it all started, it was terrible,” Amelia tries to describe how she felt for the microphones of Radio Euskadi. But the final exceeded even her wildest dreams. Especially when Toquero scored 1-0. “I went into Mestalla having taken a tranquilizer, and when he scored the goal, it was a good thing I had! It’s a mixture of happiness and pressure, I can’t explain it,” she adds. Gaizka as well as his family are supporters of Ariznavarra, the neighborhood team, “to death”, but since the forward from Vitoria-Gasteiz signed with Athletic, their rojiblanco sentiment has increased: “Of course we all support Athletic, we’re very committed to this club, we owe them so much for believing in him.”
Because the real beginning of the dream that Toquero is living didn’t start with the Copa, but with the signing of his first contract with the club. “The day that Athletic signed him, he left the house, telling me that he was going to have lunch with some friends and he wouldn’t be home until the evening. And it turned out that we went home and on the news we saw that Athletic had signed him. I was glued to the television! But that’s how he is, he never talks about things before they happen, so that he doesn’t cause a fuss at home,” she reveals.
And the truth is, according to his mother, “his character on the the pitch is a reflection of how he is in everyday life. He’s very dedicated, very much so. He’s a hard-working, committed person.” And it could be seen from the time he was a child. “He’s very active, but he was never a child particularly prone to fighting, completely the opposite, he’s always been a very sensible boy, hard-working, not at all egotistical. He’s just like you see on the pitch, he’s very transparent.”
Football has always been his passion. “His father gave him his first ball, he was just three years old, he had just started walking, and he asked us for a ball like the ones that he saw on TV,” Amelia recalls, before adding that, “he never said what he wanted to be when he grew up, but it was clear that everything he liked, he put his soul, his life, his heart into it.” He looked up to Zidane. And he was always very responsible when it came to football: “When he was just twelve, if he had a match the next day, he stayed home, he ate the food they told him to... And when he was older, sixteen, he didn’t go out either. Football always came first.”
It’s an interest that, as he’s gotten older, he’s figured out how to link to another hobby: wrestling. He celebrates his goals with the trademark gesture of one of the wrestlers, as a result of a bet with his group of friends. “He’s watched a lot of wrestling, mostly in the lounge with his friends. (She laughs.) He always celebrates his goals like that, it’s something that he bet on with his friends, so that’s how he keeps doing it. The truth is that [his friends] are his unconditional fans, they go see him as much as they can and they have a lot of fun at San Mamés,” his mother concludes.
I think we can all agree that it's nice to see Toquero finally getting some well-deserved attention - and how! (Apologies for the slightly quick-and-dirty English, though. Pretend it reads better than it does! XD)