My journey from the Bernabéu to Blackburn Rovers
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Míchel Salgado hopes his experience will stand him in good stead when Blackburn Rovers head to Old Trafford. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Míchel Salgado is surprisingly disarming for someone Steve McManaman once described as "a genuine psychopath, even in training". Maybe that's his trick? "I'm not like that at all," protests a defender who had to win and win with style for 11 years at Real Madrid yet is now a firm admirer of Sam Allardyce. "I think he meant I was a pain in the arse. You must fight for your place every single day at Real Madrid and so I was always pushing myself forward. And I was a pain in the arse." Salgado is still pushing himself forward at 35, but this is a weekend that demands he look back.
Two opposition stadiums stand out for Salgado in a career distinguished by four La Liga titles and two Champions League triumphs with Real and now an Indian summer at Venky's-owned Blackburn Rovers. One is Old Trafford, where he should maintain an ever-present league record for Rovers this afternoon, and the other is the Camp Nou, where he has agreed to be a pitch-side guest for Sky Sports when his old club renew the deepest rivalry in the game on Monday night. A decorated servant of Real Madrid stood alongside 98,000 Catalonians? "I'm going to get dogs' abuse!" he laughs. And laughs. McManaman may have had a point.
Salgado describes El Clásico as "a nation split in two" and a brief résumé of his playing days on enemy territory explains why Monday's assignment holds no concern. "The toughest game I faced in my life was the first Clásico with [Luís] Figo in our team after he moved from Barcelona [in 2000]," the former Spain international recalls. "On the way to the stadium they broke four or five windows on our team bus. By the time we reached the stadium we were all lying on the floor of the bus as bottles and stones came through the windows, but even while we were taking cover we were shouting to each other: 'We have to win this game!' It was a special game because of Figo, and he is still the traitor where Barcelona are concerned."
The head of a cockerel, bicycle chains and mobile phones greeted Figo on his first return to Barcelona, when Real lost 2-0 but ultimately amassed 17 more points to win the league. It was his reappearance two years later, however, that entered folklore courtesy of a flying pig, or at least part of it, when, as the right-back behind the Portuguese right-winger, Salgado had one of the finest views in the house.
"The first time I went up to support him at a short corner I could see they were throwing everything at him," he says. "That was the night they threw a pig's head, a big bottle of whisky and even a knife. After the first short corner, and after seeing a knife fly past, I said to Figo: 'No more short corners tonight, just put it in the box. You're on your own.'"
A collision of grand styles and high talent provides the lure for the latest edition of El Clásico but an element of pantomime villainy remains, with José Mourinho taking his bow as the Real manager at the home of his former employers. Salgado dismisses Mourinho's ability to bring a new dimension to a historic, cultural, political and sporting rivalry. "Mourinho was quite unknown in football when he was the assistant to [Sir Bobby] Robson so it will not have the same impact as Figo," he says. Nor does the philosophy of a coach who is in Uefa's dock once again amid allegations Xabi Alonso and Sergio Ramos collected deliberate red cards against Ajax sit comfortably with Salgado. "Maybe his style is not the right style according to the history of Real Madrid but it is the right style for right now, because they need to win and they are desperate. It is the right style and he is the right guy."
Salgado adds: "For me, the Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, appointed Mourinho because he was trying to find the anti-Guardiola. Mourinho is the only guy able to beat Guardiola in the knockout stage of the Champions League, as he showed with Inter last season. In their desperation they saw this as the reason to go for Mourinho. They have gone two years without the title and they have spent a lot of money. I think Mourinho is the right man to beat Guardiola, to be the anti-Guardiola, to win a trophy and to provide the club with the stability they need to work. The most important thing for Real Madrid right now is to break this Barcelona cycle. After that, build a team for the future and, after Mourinho, the president needs to find his own Guardiola. By that I mean a manager who grew up in Real Madrid and who knows all the values of Real Madrid."
According to the veteran right-back those values include "being a winner, but winning with style" and handling the mental pressure of "representing the biggest club in the world on and off the pitch." Another aspect of Real life that Salgado valued highly was camaraderie between an electric mix of talent, nationalities and egos, and he was invariably drawn to the English contingent of David Beckham, Jonathan Woodgate, Michael Owen and McManaman, a lasting friend. Beckham, he says, "never tried to speak Spanish but I helped him settle in. I used to take him to the Irish Rover pub every week. Whatever people think of Beckham, he was a great professional for Real Madrid."
When Pérez, who succeeded Salgado's father-in-law, Lorenzo Sanz, as Real president, tried to force McManaman out of the club it was the defender signed from Celta Vigo who led the resistance. "The first and biggest mistake of Florentino Pérez was not to renew the contract of Vicente del Bosque," he states. "After that, it was not renewing the contract of Fernando Hierro, our captain, then McManaman, [Fernando] Morientes and [Claude] Makélélé. We had a great team and then we had to change a lot of things to keep going."
Salgado was a committed anglophile long before he accepted Allardyce's offer of a trial at Blackburn last year, having spent a month in Margate as part of a school exchange as a teenager. He spoke to Hierro and Iván Campo about their former manager at Bolton before signing on a free transfer and credits Allardyce as "giving me a second youth". To still be playing at Old Trafford at 35, and playing well for Rovers, is a source of immense satisfaction and pride.
"United were European champions when we beat them 3-2 at Old Trafford. Redondo's heel for Raúl's goal!" he recalls. "That was the most beautiful knockout stage in the Champions League I ever played and Raúl says exactly the same. The second time we lost 4-3, although no one seems to remember that. I just remember the crowd applauding us and Ronaldo. I fell in love with the English crowd that night. In our dressing room afterwards someone said we would never lose again if we had that crowd behind us in Spain.
"It will be great for me to face Manchester United with Rovers, a pure football club, and while I have great memories of beating United in the Champions League I still have the motivation to beat them in the Premier League."